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For  Reference 

Do  Not  Take 

From  the  Library 


Every  person  who  maliciously 
cuts,  defaces,  breaks  or  injures 
any  book,  map,  chart,  picture, 
engraving,  statue,  coin,  model, 
apparatus,  or  other  work  of  lit- 
erature, art,  mechanics  or  ob- 
ject of  curiosity,  deposited  in 
any  public  library,  gallery, 
museum  or  collection  is  guilty 
of  a  misdemeanor. 

Penal  Code  of  California 
1915.  Section  623 


3  9042  04880203  4 


INCREDIBL 

HARMED 

LIFE  OF 


9lLui  1999/ $8.95 


1  THE  'STAR  WARS' 
JEN  CHOOSE  HARVARD 
'I  HOLLYWOOD? 


DUNNE  GOES 
VASHINGTON 

IT  I  SAW  AT  THE 
CHMENT  TRIAL 




tlDMINICK  DUNNE 

1:1  PENTAGON'S 
\Y  SECRET 

HYSTERY  BEHIND 
VWAR  SYNDROME 


ikRY  MATSUMOTO 

rm  at  sea 

•D  THE  SCENES  AT 
:CEAN-SAILING  RAC 
:  TERRIBLY  WRONG 


foTAN  BURROUGH 


BURUNGAME 
JUL  8  -  J999 

UBRARy  J 


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iJlAXAs: 


JOHN  RICHARDSON  on  BRICE  MARDEN 
WILLIE  MORRIS  on  EUDORA  WELTY 
MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON  on  DICK  SNYDER 
CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS  on  SIDNEY  BLUK4^THAL 
uml  DAVID  HAJDU  on  DUKE  ELLINGTON 


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TO  ORDER  OR 
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SUMMER   1999 
FITIGUES  CATALOG, 
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EXT.  167 
OR  FIND  USAT 
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tuesday,  11:15  p.m. 
buying  a  new  dress. 


in's,  men's  and  kid's  designer  fashions, 
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All  Day  Moisture  Foundation.  Long  lasting  color,  enriched  with  moisturizers,  that 
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incredible  eleven  hours.  You'll  see  a  naturally  beautiful  complexion  that  is  radiant 
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as  good  for  your  skin 

as  it  is  for  your  spirit 


O  LAY 


COSMETICS 

lasting  color  that  cares 


The  sensation  of  time 


CONCORD 
IMPRESARIO" 

Substance 
with  style. 
The  surprise 
of  cool,  solid 
stainless  steel 
afire  with  diamonds. 
Hand-sculpted... 
textured  to 
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MAY      1999      N9    465 


Feal 


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GOTH  GIRL      184 


THROUGH  THE  STARDUST  |  146 
While  other  young  stars  are  choosing  nightclubs,  Natalie 
Portman  is  weighing  Harvard  vs.  Yale  and  Hollywood  against 
any  number  of  careers.  This  month,  as  the  17-year-old 
brings  her  uncanny  maturity  to  George  Lucas's  Star  Wars 
prequel,  Leslie  Bennetts  enters  Portman's  paradoxical  world. 
Photographs  by  Annie  Leibovitz. 

MR.  DUNNE  GOES  TO  WASHINGTON  I  152 

Beginning  with  the  whispers  of  his  friend  Lucianne  Goldberg  and 
even  after  the  Lewinsky  scandal  broke,  Dominick  Dunne  maintaine 
his  allegiance  to  Bill  Clinton.  But  after  covering  the  impeachment 
trial  from  the  Senate  gallery  and  dining  in  Georgetown  with 
the  likes  of  Kay  Graham,  Vernon  Jordan,  and  Sidney  Blumenthal, 
Dunne  was  left  with  chilling  theories  and  no  illusions. 

STORM  WARNING  I  158 

On  December  26,  115  sailboats,  helmed  by  everyone  from 
billionaires  to  locksmiths,  crossed  the  starting  line  of  the 
54th  Sydney-Hobart  race.  But  when  a  vicious  storm  whipped 
the  waves  to  80  feet,  the  quest  for  glory  on  the  high  seas 
turned  into  a  desperate  fight  for  survival  that  left  six  men  dead. 
Bryan  Burrough  reports. 

SPORT  OF  OUEENS  I  166 

Hugh  Hales-Tooke  and  Dominic  Lawson  spotlight  three 
reigning  queens  of  the  chessboard— Hungary's  Polgar  sisters. 

BRICE  MARDEN'S  ABSTRACT  HEART  |  168 

As  the  recent,  ecstatic  work  of  Brice  Marden  tours  the  United 
States,  John  Richardson  traces  the  forces  that  led  the  greatest 
abstract  painter  of  his  generation  from  a  wild  Greenwich 
Village  apprenticeship  to  marriage  to  a  strong-willed  beauty, 
to  this  moment  of  triumph.  Photographs  by  Bruce  Weber. 

MARK  OF  TRIUMPH  I  178 

Lorenzo  Agius  and  Amy  Fine  Collins  spotlight  Alber  Elbaz 
as  he  turns  Yves  Saint  Laurent's  pret-a-porter  line,  Rive  Gauche 
into  a  must-have  label  for  chic  young  Parisians. 

MISSISSIPPI  QUEEN   |  180 

The  author  of  13  books  and  winner  of  virtually  every  literary 
prize,  Eudora  Welty  has  lived  as  many  stories  as  she  has  crafted 
At  her  childhood  home,  the  grande  dame  of  American  letters 
takes  Willie  Morris  through  90  years  of  dreams  and  discoveries. 

A  HEAD  FOR  HORROR  I  184 

Mary  Ellen  Mark  captures  the  cast  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  Tim 
Burton's  film  of  the  legend  of  the  Headless  Horseman— a  tale, 
writes  David  Kamp,  that  might  have  been  plucked  straight 
from  the  director's  own  imaginative  mind. 

C'ONTINUF  D    ON     PAG] 


Tiffany  with  your  eyes  closed 


F  w  w 


In  1893,  Kokichi  Mikimoto 


introduced  the  world 


to  cultured  pearls. 


In  1954,  Mikimoto  introduced 


Marilvn  Monroe 


to  cultured  pearls 


Legends  live  on. 


Limited  edition  collection  available. 


Marilyn  wearing  Mikimoto  pearls  in  1954 


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The  Elegance  Signature  Collection  presents 
remarkable  designs,  appropriate  for  leisure 
time  and  formal  occasions.  With  solid 
stainless  steel  cases  and  bracelets,  plus 
polished  deployment  buckles. 


Elegance  Signature  Collection 


All  CITIZEN  watches  are  covered  by  a  5-year  limited  warranty. 
See  a  copy  of  this  warranty  at  any  CITIZEN  watch  retailer. 
www.citizenwatch.com 


Refined  artistry.  Superior  craftsmanship.  Luxury 
details  throughout.  In  sleek, 
contemporary  designs 
that  reflect  a  timeless  beauty. 


CITIZEN  watches  can  be  purchased  in  the: 

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THE  WORLD.  ON  A  STRING  |  108 


A  JAZZ  OF  THEIR  OWN   I  188 

The  bond  between  Duke  Ellington  and  Billy  Strayhorn  made 
for  such  classics  as  "Take  the  TV  Train"  and  "Satin  Doll"— and  a 
enigmatic  relationship.  On  the  100th  anniversary  of  Ellington's 
birth,  David  Hajdu  reveals  how  the  legendary  jazz  king  and 
Lothario  gave  voice  to  a  soft-spoken,  gay  composer  and  found  in 
him  the  truest  partner  he  ever  had. 


Columns 


I'LL  NEVER  EAT  LUNCH  IN  THIS  TOWN  AGAIN   I 
When  Christopher  Hitchens  wanted  to  call  the  president  a  liar, 
he  was  forced  to  challenge  the  testimony  of  an  old  friend— ignitii 
furious  charges  of  betrayal.  Just  what  was  he  thinking? 

THE  PENTAGON'S  TOXIC  SECRET  I  82 

A  crusading  immunologist  believes  she  has  linked  some  cases 
of  Gulf  War  syndrome,  a  cruel  and  undiagnosed  condition 
plaguing  thousands  of  veterans,  to  an  anthrax  vaccine.  Followir 
a  Pentagon  paper  trail,  Gary  Matsumoto  investigates 
the  mystery  behind  the  illness.  Photographs  by  Harry  Benson. 

HALL  OF  FAME  |  108 

Katharine  Marx  nominates  violin  teacher  Roberta 
Guaspari-Tzavaras  for  bringing  the  sound  of  music  to  1,200 
inner-city  children.  Portrait  by  Anders  Overgaard. 

DICK  SNYDER'S  TARNISHED  CROWN  I  110 
How  did  Dick  Snyder,  the  visionary  chairman  of  Simon  &  Schusl 
end  up  losing  his  job,  then  running  his  new  venture.  Golden 
Books,  into  the  ground?  Michael  Shnayerson  has  the  page-turnin 
rise  and  fall  of  a  publishing  king.  Photographs  by  Gasper  Tringall 


Vanities 


MIGHTY  MENA   I  131 

Party  line— Washington  novelist  Christopher  Buckley's  speed  die 
George  Wayne  and  Donny  Osmond  share  some  milk  and  a 
smile;  barking  doggerel— Laura  Jacobs  and  Hilary  Knight's  ode 
to  the  Westminster  Dog  Show. 


Et  Cetera 


EDITOR'S  LETTER:  Profiles  in  courage  I  48 

CONTRIBUTORS   I  52 

LETTERS:  This  boy's  life  I  62 

CREDITS   |  212 

PLANETARIUM:  Toughen  up,  Taurus  I  214 

PROUST  OUESTIONNAIRE:  LeoCastelli  I  216 


TO  FIND  CONDE  NAST  MAGAZINES  ON   IHE  WORLD  WIDE  WEB.  VISIT  www.cpicunous 


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Grapefruit  Juice  with  Calcium  has  been  revved  up  with  PruitCaV,  a  better  type  of  calcium 
help  keep  your  bones  healthy  and  strong.  In  fact,  one  glass  has  more  calcium  than  a 

Perfect. 


VAN  I  I   T     r  A  I  K     KKUnUMUN 


tVtNIi     AINU     UrrOKIUNMItJ 


VAMITY  FAIR 


Bruce  McCall  Retrospective 

Admirers  and  fans  gathered  in  New  York  at  Milk  Studios  and  in  Detroit  at  the 
Cranbrook  Art  Museum  for  a  retrospective  of  original  artwork  by  Bruce  McCall. 
McCall,  a  Vanity  Fair  contributor  and  one  of  America's  most  admired  humorists  and 
illustrators,  attended  both  events.  Guests  were  treated  to  an  exhibit  of  his  signature 
illustrations,  featuring  bright  and  inventive  planes,  trains,  and  automobiles. 


e  from  top  left:  in  Detroit, 
iefton  from  Bozell  and  his 
fe,  Barbara;  Bruce  McCall 
ter).  surrounded  by  Steve 
l.  Matt  Woehrman,  Leslie 
and  Betsy  Adelstein.  from 
pbell  Ewald;  in  New  York, 
Laurent-Rella  and  Kieron 
from  the  G&P  Charitable 
idation;  Andrea  Robinson 
Ralph  Lauren  Fragrances. 


It's  a  Party. . . 


'■air  is  the  sponsor  of  the  FIRST  LOOK 
?ries,  a  monthly  screening  program 
d  by  the  Tribeca  Film  Center  and 
n  Kodak.  Held  in  New  York  and  Los 
s,  First  Look  provides  a  premier 
m  for  emerging  filmmakers  to  debut 
"ojects,  while  giving  influential  members 
s  independent  film  community  a 
Dok"  at  promising  new  work.  The 
ings  are  followed  by  an  intimate 
ion  where  filmmakers  have  an 
unity  to  mingle  with  the  who's  who  of 
i  industry. 

ire  information,  please  contact  the  First 
Film  Series  at  212.941.4011  or  visit 
k@tribecafilm.com. 


A  Premier  Evening 

On  February  11,  a  group  of  Hollywood's 
youngest  and  brightest  stars  teamed  up  with 
SAKS  FIFTH  AVENUE  and  Project  A.L.S.  to  help 
raise  awareness  and  funds  for  A.L.S.  (also 
known  as  Lou  Gehrig's  disease).  The  evening 
was  sponsored  in  part  by  ERMENEGILDO 
ZEGNA. 


Left:  co-hosts  Kristen 
Johnston  and  Ben  Stiller. 
Above:  Actor  Dylan 
McDermott  with  Richard 
Cohen,  president  of 
Ermenegildo  Zegna. 


"All  Across  America" 
Sweepstakes 

Vanity  Fair  and  GQ  have  teamed  up  with 
HAMILTON  WATCH  to  bring  you  an  "All  Across 
America"  sweepstakes.  Visit  any  of  Hamilton's 
retail  locations  nationwide  and  enter  to  win  a 
one-week  trip  for  two  along  a  stretch  of 
America's  Highway,  Route  66.  Departing  from 
historic  Kingman,  Arizona,  and  culminating 
with  a  whirlwind  weekend  in  Hollywood, 
California,  the  trip  includes  sightseeing,  lodging, 
transportation,  and  one  meal  per  day. 

The  winner  and  a  guest  will  also  each  receive  a 
Hamilton  watch  and  an  all-American  Lucky 
Brand  vacation  wardrobe. 


Hamilton  watches  are  available  at  Tourneau, 
Here  to  Timbuktu,  Joseph  Edwards,  Sheila's 
Fine  Jewelry,  Smart  Jewelers,  Borsheim, 
Mon  Cadeau,  Beverly  Hills  Watch  Co.,  and 
Tic  Time.  For  other  Hamilton  retailers  or  the 
one  nearest  you,  please  call  toll-free,  1.800. 
234TIME. 


NO  PURCHASE  NECESSARY.  Dewing  ts  open  to  all ' 
and  over  with  a  valid  driver's  license  and  with  the  exception  of  employees  of 
Tourneau.  Here  to  Timbuktu,  Joseph  Edwards,  Sheila's  Fine  Jewelry,  Smart 
Jewelers,  Borsheim,  Mon  Cadeau.  Beverly  Hills  Watch  Co.,  Tic  Time.  Lucky 
Brand  Jeans,  Hamilton,  The  Conde  Nasi  Publications,  participating  retailers 
and  their  advertising  and  promotion  agencies  and  their  families.  Deposrt  your 
entry  blank  in  the  official  receptacle  at  participating  Hamilton  retailers 
between  May  1  and  May  31. 1999.  or  mail  a  3x5  card  to  AflAcn 
Sweepstakes,  c/o  GQ,  350  Madison  Avenue,  New  York,  New  York  10017, 
indicating  your  name,  address,  and  telephone  number  All  enti  ■ 
the  property  of  sponsors  and  will  not  be  acknowledged  or  returned.  One 
winner  will  be  chosen  in  a  random  drawing  by  GQ  and  Vanity  firt 
on  or  about  June  30,1999.  All  decisions  of  the  judges  are  final  Winner  need 
not  be  present  to  win  and  will  be  notified  by  phone  or  mail  on/about  July  1. 
1999,  Odds  of  winning  depend  on  the  number  of  entries  received  You  must 
provide  your  name,  address,  and  telephone  number  on  your  entry 
Mechanically  reproduced  entries  are  not  eligible  Enti  ■■ 
postage  due,  incomplete,  forged,  mutilated,  defaced  or,  in  any  mar\r>er 
altered  are  also  not  eligible   Entries  are  limited  to  one  per  person  and  must 
be  received  by  May  31.  1999  One  Grand  ?'■■  j  r.  follows  a 

one-week  trip  for  two  along  a  section  of  Route  66  begir 
and  ending  in  Los  Angeles.  CA.  The  trip  n 

from  the  major  commercial  airport  in  the  US  closest  to  the  winner's  home. 
one  activity  per  day,  lodging  (doubk 

for  the  entire  trip  The  prize  has  an  appro  ■  I  '  15,000  All 

insurance,  fuel  charges,  and  any  I 
stated  are  the  sole  responsibility  of  the  wiffl 

concluded  by  May  31.  2000  Cerl  (1  dates  may 

apply.  All  taxes  are  the  1 1 

agree  to  be  bound  by  the  Ofl  accepting  the  prize 

agrees  that  the  prize  is  awarded  on  the  condition  tin- 
Timbuktu,  Joseph  Edwards,  Sheila's  Fmr»  Jewelry;  Smart  [ewelen,  Borsheim. 
Mon  Cadeau,  Beverly  Hills  Watch  Co..   '  Brand  Jeans. 

Hamilton,  and  the  Cond£  Nast  Publications  will  have  no  liability  whatsoever 
for  any  injuries,  losses,  or  damages  of  \  from  the 

participation  n  mi  the  use  or  accept  ■ 

prize  HamittOfl  GQi  ^and  Jeans 

reserve  tnn  option  to  . . 
' 

Vi -jrury  fiflfr  maga/tne.  and  GQ  magazine 

Void  m  Puerto  Rico  and  where  prohibited  by  law  Subject  to  aP  federal,  state, 
and  local  taxes  and  regulations  Acceptance  of  prize  constitutes  consent  to 
use  winner's  name  and  likeness  for  advertising,  publicly,  and  edrtorial 
purposes  (except  where  prohibited)  The  winner  may  be  requred  to  sign  an 
impanion  to  srgn  a 
liabifity/puN  i  0m  from 

fllce  as  'rvle*verabfe. 
//inner  may  be  selected  W.n- <  rded  and 

dates  of  award  can  be  obtained  by  sen  ■  stamped 

envelope  to:  All  Across  America  Sweepstakes  Wwec.  c/o  ("■:". 
350  Madison  Avenue.  New  York.  New  York  10017afterju*y  1. 1999 


RALPH     LAUREN 


ROMANCE 


^ 
^ 


0>A^CE 


MACY'S    EAST 

1SOO  456-2297 

MACY'S    WEST 

l-800.G2a.974E 


THE     WOMEN'S      FRAGRANCE     BY     RALPH      LAUREf 


/- 


VANITY    f  A  I  K    PROMOTION 


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® 

ACURA 

hiiy      ii'u'i,'  g i  1 1 


www.acura.com 

® 

fc>efc>o 

www.bebe.com 


"fKfmnuBEinil 


t  BLUE  NOTE. 

www.  bluenote.  com 


BOUCHERON 

PARIS 

www.  boucheron.  com 


llcpuis  1773 

www.  bregue  t.com 

BULOVA 

www.bulova.com 


www.parfums-azzaro.  com 

OCITIZEN 

www.citizenwatch.com 

CL1NIQUE 

www.  clinique.  com 


A  diamond  is  forever. 
De  Beers 

www.  adiamondisforever.  com 


www.gap.com 


vanity  faiii 


Kdilor  (.KAYDON  ('AK'I'KK 


Managing  Editoi  i  hrisgarri  ii 

Design  Director  david  Harris 

Executive  Literary  Editor  wayni  i  awson 

Features  F.ditor  jani  sarkin 

Senior  Articles  Editors  DOUGLAS  siiimit.  aimli  BELL,  BRUCE  handy 

Editor-at-Large  matt  tyrnauer 

Legal  Affairs  Editor  ROBERT  wai  sh    Senior  Editor  nedzkman 

Fashion  Director  ELIZABETH  salt/man    Photography  Director  siisan  white 

Director  of  Special  Projects  sara  marks 

Assistant  Managing  Editor  ellen  kiell 

Art  Director  Gregory  mastrianni 

London  Editor  henry  porter    West  Coast  Editor  krista  smith 

Special  Correspondents  dominick  dunne.  bob  colacello, 

MAUREEN  ORTH,  BRYAN  BURROUGH,  AMY  FINE  COLLINS 

Writer-at-Large  marie  brenner 

Special  Projects  Editor  reinaldo  herrera 

Copy  Editor  peter  devine    Research  Director  Patricia  j  singer    Photo  Editor  lisa  berman 

Photo  Research  Editor  jeannie  Rhodes    Vanities  Editor  riza  cruz 

Associate  Copy  Editor  allison  a  merrill 

Research  Associates  olivta  i  abel,  aliyah  baruchin.  veronica  byrd. 

DAMIEN  McCAFFERY,  GABRIEL  SANDERS 

Associate  Art  Directors  mimi  dutta.  julie  weiss    Designer  lisa  Kennedy 

Production  Managers  dina  AMARiTaDESHAN,  martha  hurley 

Assistant  to  the  Editor  punch  hutton 

Editorial  Business  Manager  mersini  fialo 

Fashion  Editor  tina  skouras    Senior  Fashion  Market  Editor  mary  f  braeunig 

U.K.  Associate  dana  brown    Paris  Editor  veronique  plazolles 

Art  Production  Manager  Christopher  george 

Copy  Production  Associate  Anderson  tepper    Associate  Style  Editor  kathryn  macleod 

Assistant  Editor  evgenia  peretz    Associate  Fashion  Editor  patricta  herrera 

Editorial  Promotions  Associates  darryl  brantley.  tim  Mchenry 

Editorial  Associates  Hilary  frank,  john  gillies,  kimberly  kessler     Features  Assistant  shane  McC( 

Editorial  Assistants  lan  bascetta.  kate  ewald.  michael  hogan. 

LAURA  KANG,  TARAH  KENNEDY.  SIOBHAN  McDEVITT 

Photo  Assistant  sarah  czeladnicki 

Contributing  Projects  Associates  gaby  grekin.  Patrick  sheehan 

Contributing  Projects  Assistants  heather  fink,  marc  goodman,  Katharine  marx.  ioaquin  torre 

Contributing  Fashion  Assistants  nicole  Lepage,  bozhena  orekhova,  mary  louise  platt 


Editor,  Creative  Development  david  friend 


Contributing  Editors 

ROBERT  SAM  ANSON,  JUDY  BACHRACH.  ANN  LOUISE  BARDACH,  LESLIE  BENNETTS, 

CARL  BERNSTEIN.  PETER  BISKIND.  BUZZ  B1SSINGER.  HOWARD  BLUM,  PATRICIA  BOSWORTH,  ANDREW  COCKBU 

LESLIE  COCKBURN,  JENNET  CONANT,  BEATRICE  MONTI  DELLA  CORTE,  RUPERT  EVERETT.  JULES  FEIFFER, 

BRUCE  FEIRSTEIN.  DAVID  HALBERSTAM.  EDWARD  W  HAYES,  CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS.  A  M   HOMES,  LAURA  JAC 

DAVID  KAMP,  EDWARD  KLEIN,  FRAN  LEBOWITZ,  MICHAEL  LUTIN,  DAVID  MARGOLICK,  KIM  MASTERS. 

BRUCE  MCCALL.  ANNE  McNALLY.  RICHARD  MERKIN,  FREDERIC  MORTON.  DEE  DEE  MYERS,  ANDREW  NEIL, 

BETSEY  OSBORNE.  ELISE  O'SHAUGHNESSY,  WILLIAM  PROCHNAU,  JOHN  RICHARDSON,  LISA  ROBINSON, 

ELISSA  SCHAPPELL.  KEVIN  SESSUMS.  GAIL  SHEEHY,  MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON,  ALEX  SHOUMATOFF,  INGRID  SISC 

SALLY  BEDELL  SMITH.  NICK  TOSCHES,  DIANE  VON  FURSTENBERG,  HEATHER  WATTS, 

GEORGE  WAYNE.  MARJ0R1E  WILLIAMS,  JAMES  WOLCOTT 


Contributing  Photographers 

ANNIE  LEIBOVITZ 

JONATHAN  BECKER,  HARRY  BENSON.  MICHEL  COMTE,  DAFYDD  JONES, 

HELMUT  NEWTON,  HERB  RITTS.  DAVID  SEIDNER,  SNOWDON,  BRUCE  WEBER.  FIROOZ  ZAHEDI 

Contributing  Artists  tim  sheaffer.  Robert  risko,  Hilary  knight 

Contributing  Editor  (Los  Angeles)  wendy  stark  morrissey 

Contributing  Photography  Editor  sunhee  c.  grinnell 

Contributing  Stylist  kim  meehan 


Director  of  Public  Relations  beth  kseniak 
Deputy  Directors  of  Public  Relations  anina  c.  mahoney,  sharon  schieffer 


Editorial  Director  JAMES  TRUMAN 


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MITCHELL  B.  I  OX 

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Advertising  Director  jii.i  D  si  I  UG 
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Executive  Director,  Jewelry  and  Watch  i.inda  s  ki.oner 

Executive  Director,  International  Fashion  and  Retail  [ova  doni  m 

Fashion  Director  NOREEN  DELANEY 

Beauty  Director  michi  in  k  i  rii.dman 

Sales  Development  Manager  KAREN  landrud 

Beauty  Manager  WEND]  V.  sanders 

Entertainment  and  Spirits  Manager  jay  spaleta 

Account  Manager  geraldine  beatty 

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Associate  Creative  Services  Director  Jennifer  orr  kelman 

Associate  Promotion  Director  meridith  parks  rotman 

Art  Director  colleen  meade 

Merchandising  Managers  Leslie  k  brown,  sheehan  becker 

Special  Projects  Manager  chris echaurre 

Promotion  Coordinator  tania  leclere 

Promotion  Coordinator/Copywriter  marjorie  mindell 

Promotion  Production  Coordinator  kerri  fallon 

Promotion  Assistant  diana  rayzman 

Advertising  Assistants  katie  felton.  Meredith  kurland  alexis  weinstein.  lisa  barlow  (Detroit), 

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Vanity  Fair  is  published  by  The  Conde  Nast  Publications  Inc.. 

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Executive  Vice  Presidents  charles  h.  townsend. 

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Senior  Vice  President-Consumer  Marketing  PETER  A.  ARMOUR 

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President-Asia-Pacific  DlDIER  guerin 


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Profiles  in  Courage 


Fin  the  tired  wage  apes  who  wander  the 
kills  of  Vanity  Fair,  tales  of  epic  hero- 
ism or  achievement  oul  in  the  real  world 
are  both  a  balm  and  a  source  of  frus- 
tration. The  world  beyond  our  offices  on 
Madison  Avenue  at  45th  Street  comes 
to  us  in  the  form  of  photographs,  Taxes, 
and  FedExed  manuscripts.  Journalists 
don't  really  live  life  they  just  report  on 
those  who  do  it  better.  In  this  issue  are  three 
quite  different  stories  of  lives  informed  by  intel- 
lectual endurance  or  admirable  courage. 

First  is  the  saga  ot  Dr.  Pamela  Asa,  an  immu- 
nologist  in  Memphis.  Tennessee,  who  since  the  mid-1990s  has 
waged  a  lonely  battle  against  the  medical  establishment  and  the 
Pentagon  on  behalf  of  the  thousands  of  veterans  suffering  from 
what  is  commonly  referred  to  as  Gulf  War  syndrome.  Since  the 
end  of  the  six-week-long  Gulf  War,  in  1991,  most  experts  have  be- 
lieved that  no  single  illness  can  account  for  the  debilitating  symp- 
toms—including nausea,  fatigue,  joint  pain,  and  seizures -that  many 
Gulf  War  veterans  have  complained  about.  Asa  believed  other- 
wise. And  according  to  Gary  Matsumoto's  groundbreaking  article, 
"The  Pentagon's  Toxic  Secret,"  which  begins  on  page  82,  after  five 
years  of  steady  research  and  investigation,  Asa  believes  she  has  es- 
tablished the  probable  cause  for  at  least  some  cases  of  Gulf  War 
syndrome:  a  vaccine  secretly  (and  illegally)  administered  by  the 
Pentagon  itself.  This  is  startling  stuff. 

Ten  thousand  miles  away,  in  the  churning  waters  near  Sydney 
Harbour,  Australia,  notions  of  heroism  and  courage  were  truly  put 
to  the  test,  and  the  consequences  were  most  dire.  On  December 
26,  Boxing  Day,  115  of  the  world's  most  sophisticated  ocean-racing 


boats  set  sail  on  a  630-mile  course  to  lasmar 
I  hat  one  Of  the  boats  was  helmed  by  Larry 
son.  the  billionaire  owner  of  the  Oracle  softw 
corporation,  and  that  one  of  his  hands  was  l.a 
Ian  Murdoch,  heir  apparent  to  his  father  Rupe 
News  Corporation,  made  the  race  interest 
enough.  That  a  monster  summer  storm 
proached  as  the  boats  headed  out  into  open 
only  heightened  the  tension.  As  special  cor 
spondent  Bryan  Burrough  reports  in  his  riveti 
account,  "Storm  Warning,"  which  begins 
page  158,  90-mile-an-hour  winds  whipped  up 
foot  waves,  pummeling  even  Ellison's  maxi-yac 
Sayonara,  which  won  the  race.  Others  were  less  fortunate, 
sailors  were  killed  in  the  36-hour  nightmare  of  the  storm,  and  sev 
boats  went  down.  More  might  have  died,  had  it  not  been  for 
helicopter  rescues  carried  out  by  paramedics  who  risked  their  li 
plucking  desperate  sailors  from  roiling  seas. 

Finally,  on  page  180,  the  legendary  southern  journalist  Wi 
Morris  pays  tribute  to  one  of  his  literary  heroes,  novelist  Eudo 
Welty,  whose  quiet  brilliance  has  made  her  a  kind  of  southern  Ja 
Austen.  Morris  and  Welty  were  born  and  raised  in  Mississippi, 
land  of  William  Faulkner  and  Tennessee  Williams,  and  they  ha 
known  each  other  for  most  of  Welty 's  career,  during  which  she  h 
produced  13  books,  including  her  Pulitzer  Prize-winning  1972  ira 
terpiece,  Tiie  Optimist's  Daughter.  Then  again,  although  Welty,  wl 
is  90  this  month,  may  well  be  America's  greatest  living  writer,  perhaj 
the  most  heroic  thing  about  her  is  the  fact  that  she's  never  taken  h 
legend— or  herself— half  as  seriously  as  everyone  else  seems  to. 


Portrait  of  a  Lady 


(^^ffaCtuU 


ON  THE  COVER 

Natalie  Portman  wears  a 

shirt  by  Prada.  Hair  by  Sally 

Hershberger.  Makeup  by 

Jeanine  Lobell.  Hair  products 

from  Ready  to  Wear/John 

Frieda.  Makeup  from  Chanel. 

Props  styled  by  Rick  Floyd. 

Styled  by  Nicoletta  Santoro. 

Photographed  exclusively 

for  V.F.  bv  Annie  Leibovitz. 


„ 


Natalie  Portman  poses  for  Annie  Leibovitz  in  front  of  a  camellia  bush  in  full  bloom. 
It  was  Portman's  idea  to  give  the  shoot  its  fairy-tale  feel,  and  the  ivy-covered  town  of  Lowndesboro, 
Alabama,  provided  the  perfect  backdrop.  Dress  by  Prada.  Inset,  makeup  artist  Jeanine  Lobell 
touches  up  the  usually  makeup-free  Portman.  Photographed  on  February  7,  1999. 


MAY     1999 


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Fighting  Terrorists 

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Glamorous... 

Whether  you're  already  hooked  on  the  USA 
NETWORK'S  La  Femme  Nikita  or  you  have  yet  to 
discover  this  basic  cable  sensation,  you  won't 
want  to  miss  another  episode.  Starring  Peta 
Wilson,  La  Femme  Nikita  turns  up  the  heat  this 
season,  Sundays  at  10  p.m./9  p.m.  Central,  only 
on  the  USA  Network. 


"For  having  spent  so  much  time  in  Hollywood,  Natalie  Portman 
is  very  unusual  for  a  teenager,  and  unusual  for  an  actress,"  says 
contributing  editor  Leslie  Bennetts,  who  profiles  the  extraordinary 
young  star  in  this  issue.  "She's  the  kind  of  teenager  that  people 
say  doesn't  exist  in  this  day  and  age."  In  fact,  Bennetts  sometimes 
found  it  hard  to  believe  that  she  was  talking  to  a  17-year-old. 
"I  know  a  lot  of  40-year-olds  who  are  not  nearly  as  mature  as  she  is." 


Before  getting  back  to  the  third 
volume  of  his  acclaimed  biography, 
A  Life  of  Picasso,  John  Richardson 
is  fine-tuning  A  Sorcerer's  Apprentice, 
a  memoir  of  his  life  in  a  Provencal 
chateau  with  the  celebrated  collector 
Douglas  Cooper,  and  the  part  they 
played  in  Picasso's  entourage.  In 
this  issue,  Richardson  profiles  Brice 
Marden,  whom  he  describes  as  the 
greatest  nonfigurative  painter  of  his 
generation.  "Brice's  painterly  obsessioi 
and  addiction  to  hard  work  remind 
me  of  the  giants  of  the  school  of 
Paris,"  Richardson  says. 


"Writing  about  times  when  lives  are 

at  stake  is  much  closer  to  my  heart  than 

money  and  other  stuff  that  I've  written 

about,"  says  special  correspondent 

Bryan  Burrough,  who  in  this  issue  reports  on 

the  Sydney-Hobart  yacht  race,  which 

turned  tragic  when  a  tumultuous  storm  hit. 

Burrough,  a  former  Wall  Street  Journal 

reporter,  says  his  fascination  with 

true  stories  began  at  his  grandmother's 

house.  "She  always  had  Reader's 

Digest,  and  I  would  read  the  real-life 

dramas.  I  wanted  to  write  them. 

And  this  was  my  chance." 


CONTINUF.I)    ON     I- A  (I  I      5  6 


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TlFFANY&CO. 

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V0O   MOVADO 


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Lonlribulors 


(    ON  I  I  N  li  I    II     I    I' 

Alia  the  Inst  reports  about  the 

mysterious  Gulf  War  syndrome  surfaced,  in 

1991,  Gary  Matsumoto  look  a  personal  interest. 

"I  was  a  foreign  correspondent  lor  NB( 

during  Desert  Storm,"  says  Matsumoto.  "I 

began  to  ask  myself,  Is  my  body  a  licking  lime 
bomb?  Am  I  going  to  gel  sick?"  Fortunately, 
Matsumoto  did  not,  but  last  year  he  started 
investigating  the  possibility  that  an  army- 
supplied  vaccine  was  an  actual  cause  of 
( rulf  War  syndrome.  The  results  of  his 
investigation  begin  on  page  82. 


For  contributing  editor  Michael  Shnayerson, 

downfalls  are  always  more  interesting  than 
success  stories.  "They're  a  challenge  to 
character."  So  he  watched  keenly  as  publish 
Dick  Snyder,  deposed  at  Simon  &  Schuster, 
tried  a  comeback  with  Golden  Books,  only 
to  stumble.  "He's  had  to  admit  to  serious 
misjudgments,"  observes  Shnayerson,  whose 
profile  of  Snyder  begins  on  page  110.  "But 
he  has,  and  in  agreeing  to  discuss  them  wit! 
Vanity  Fair,  he's  been  pretty  game." 


Although  she  didn't  realize  it, 

Krista  Smith  was  a  shoo-in  during  her 

job  interview  at  Vanity  Fair  in  1987. 

"My  resume  really  only  said  that 

I  spoke  Italian  and  had  worked  on 

Gary  Hart's  campaign,"  recalls  Smith, 

who  grew  up  in  Denver.  "But  Vanity 

Fair  was  right  in  the  middle  of  a  huge 

expose  by  Gail  Sheehy  on  Gary  Hart." 

Two  weeks  later,  Smith  began  working 

as  a  fact  checker  on  the  story.  She 

moved  through  the  ranks  and  in  1993 

was  promoted  to  West  Coast  editor. 

Her  position  entails  covering  the 

entertainment  industry  from  all  angles: 

producing  shoots,  writing  about 

celebrities,  traveling  to  film  festivals, 

and  watching  a  constant 

stream  of  movies. 


Contributing  artist  Hilary  Knight 

admits  that  he  is  "very  pro-pug, 
because  of  Eloise, "  which  he  illustrated. 
But  he  was  thrilled  to  see  a  six-pound 
papillon  named  Kirby  take  "Best  in 
Show"  at  the  Westminster  Dog  Show. 
Knight,  whose  illustrations  of  the  event 
appear  on  page  142,  was  at  the  edge 
of  the  ring  for  the  judges'  final  look  at 
the  dogs.  "When  the  papillon  came 
out,"  Knight  recalls,  "it  was  like  looking 
at  a  rock  star."  This  month,  Simon 
&  Schuster  will  publish  Eloise:  The 
Absolutely  Essential  Edition. 


VANITY     FIR 


MAY     1999 


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"A.M.  Homes  is  one  of  the 
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—MICHAEL  CUNNINGHAM 

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•     AND  LOOK  FOR  THE  SAFETY  OF  OBJECTS 
NOW  AVAILABLE  IN  PAPERBACK 


THIS  BOY'S  LIFE 


elanie  Thernstrom's  "The  Cru- 
cifixion of  Matthew  Shepard" 
[March]  is  one  of  the  most  heart- 
rending, infuriating,  and  brilliant 
pieces  of  writing  I  have  read  in  a 
very  long  time.  You  said  her  article  set 
out  to  "fathom  how  one  of  Americas 
most  God-fearing  communities  bred  a 
fatal  hatred."  The  answer  is  simple.  Few 
people  are  more  potentially  dangerous 
and  intolerant  than  those  who  claim  God 
as  their  own.  The  world  is,  and  always  has 
been,  littered  with  the  lives  of  people  who 
have  been  destroyed  in  the  name  of  God 
simply  because  they  were  not  deemed 
"normal."  I  hope  Vanity  Fair  will  keep  up 
its  very  high  standards  and  perhaps  offer 
free  subscriptions  to  some  of  those  living 
in  "God-fearing"  communities. 

MICHAEL  WRIST-KNUDSEN 

Ely,  England 

SINCE  THE  KILLING  of  Matthew  Shep- 
ard, the  fight  for  hate-crime  legislation 
has  gained  more  support.  But  the  price 
was  too  high.  Shepard  is  not  a  tool  for 
political  progress  but  a  symbol  of  how 
this  society  has  failed  its  youth.  The  hor- 


ror of  Matthew's  plight  lies  not  only  in 
his  savage  death  but  also  in  his  unfortu- 
nate life.  Here  was  a  bright  young  man, 
full  of  hope  and  light,  who  consistently 
suffered  from  depression  and  suicidal 
thoughts— like  so  many  other  young  gays 
and  lesbians.  The  real  tragedy  is  that 
society  allowed  and,  indeed,  prepared 
him  for  his  tragic  end.  Thank  you  for 
shedding  some  light  on  this  unnecessary 
tragedy  and  taking  us  beyond  Matthew 
the  Martyr  to  Matthew  the  Human. 

PAUL  SILVA 
Washington.  D.C. 

HAVING  READ  YOUR  ARTICLE  on  the 
tragedy  of  Matthew  Shepard,  I  feel  com- 
pelled to  speak  to  your  readers  and, 
most  of  all,  to  the  people  of  Laramie, 
Wyoming.  After  learning  the  details  sur- 
rounding his  death,  many  gay  Americans 
immediately  recognized  that  it  could  just 
as  easily  have  occurred  in  Leeds,  Ala- 
bama, or  Southwick,  Massachusetts,  as 
in  Laramie.  In  addition,  we  realized  that 
the  victim  could  have  been  any  one  of 
us  instead  of  Matthew  Shepard. 

While  we  do  not  want  to  turn  Matt 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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into  a  "gaj  icon  we  must  dedicate  our- 
selves to  cultural  and  political  change  so 
Mi. ii  ins  death  will  not  haw  been  in  vain. 
Because  of  his  suffering,  many  mothers 
called  ilk'ii  gay  sons  01  daughters  to 

make  sine  thai  they  were  O.K.  But,  sad- 
ly, many  more  did  not. 

MK'IIAl  I   I    ARM]  NTROUl 
Raleigh,  North  Carolina 

UNFORTUNATELY,  Melanie  I  hernstrom's 
well-written  and  convincing  report  about 
the  tortured  life  and  death  of  Matthew 
Shepard  was  undermined  by  your  maga- 
zine's betrayal  of  his  family.  Fearful  of  her 
son's  exploitation,  Matthew's  mother  made 
clear  that  she  abhors  comparisons  with 
Jesus,  saying  that  her  son  was  no  saint. 
Yet,  insensitively,  you  called  the  killing  a 
"crucifixion"  in  your  headline. 

DONALDS.  WARNER 
The  Bronx,  New  York 

AFTER  READING  Melanie  Thernstrom's 
article  on  Matthew  Shepard  I  imme- 
diately turned  back  to  the  "Contribu- 
tors" section  to  look  up  the  author. 
When  1  discovered  that  her  best  friend 
had  been  murdered,  my  response  was 
"I  knew  it." 

Less  than  two  months  before  the  killing 
of  young  Matthew,  a  beloved  friend  of 
mine  was  shot  to  death  by  someone  who 
claimed  to  love  him.  As  a  gay  man  in 
my  late  30s,  I  find  that  the  death  of  a 
friend  is  not  an  uncommon  experience. 
But  to  lose  a  friend  to  a  senseless,  brutal 


murdei    has    turned    my   world    upside 

down  and  nearly  drowned  me  with  i  on 

fusion  and  pain 

While  reading  Ms.  I  hernslrom's  arti- 
cle, I  fell  m\  own  healing  progress  in 
the  way  that  it  does  only  when  I  meet 
someone  who  has  been  there  Matthew's 
family  and  friends  were  presented  to  me 
with  such  compassion  and  insight  that  I 
was  certain  the  writer  had  been  person- 
ally linked  to  a  similar  kind  of  pain. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  everyone  who 
knew  and  loved  Matthew  Shepard  ben- 
efited from  the  experience  of  meeting 
Melanie  Thernstrom.  She  says  of  Mat- 
thew, "He  speaks  to  people  in  an  extra- 
ordinary way."  The  same  can  be  said  of 
Melanie  Thernstrom. 

PHILLIP  B.  PRILLMAN 
Honolulu,  Hawaii 


The  Prime  of  Ms.  Barbara  Walters 

AT  51,  I'VE  MANAGED  to  keep  my  hair,  my 
teeth,  and,  for  the  most  part,  my  waistline. 
I've  been  a  successful  English  teacher, 
writer,  and  speaker  for  30  years.  My  midlife 
crisis  some  years  ago  involved  neither 
sports  cars  nor  neophytes;  instead,  I  had  a 
renewed  love  affair  with  Deborah,  my  own 
cherished  wife  of  20  years,  and  we  now 
have  a  terrific  10-year-old  son  as  a  result. 
The  only  problem  with  all  this  hard 
work,  good  fortune,  and  clean  living  is 
that  I'm  not  likely  to  show  up  on  Bar- 
bara Walters's  interview  list,  and  so 
I'm  also  not  likely  to  have  a 
chance  to  tell  her  that  she  is 
the  best-looking,  sexiest  wom- 
an on  any  program  on  any 
channel  in  any  time  slot.  Jennet 
Conant's  article  ["Major  Bar- 
bara," March],  with  its  accom- 
panying photographs,  highlights 
the  main  reason  people  want  to 
talk  with  Barbara  Walters:  Miss 
Walters  herself,  an  enviable,  en- 
during blend  of  classic  beauty 
and  beautiful  class. 

PAUL  LANKFORD 
Virginia  Beach,  Virginia 


Master  Callas 


STELIOS  GALATOPOULOS'S  "Cal- 
las in  Love"  [March]  put  to  rest 
any  doubts  I  may  have  had  re- 
garding Callas's  strengths,  both 
as  an  artist  and  as  a  woman 
who  knew  what  she  was  willing 
to  give  up  for  her  music.  I  had 
always  admired  Callas  for  her 


tenacity.  But  I  had  difficulty  reconciling 
her  public  persona  with  the  private  one 
created  by  the  media  al'tei  Onassis  mar- 
ried  Jackie  Kennedy:  that  of  a  spurned 
lover.  Even  when  I  aye  Dunaway  por- 
trayed (alias  onstage  in  San  Francisco, 
the  idea  of  her  having  been  jilted  was 
emphasized  in  several  scenes.  I  think 
Aristotle  Onassis  was  wise  enough  to  re- 
alize who  really  cared  for  him  after  his 
charade  of  a  marriage  to  Jackie.  I  can't 
wait  to  buy  the  book  when  it  comes  out. 

MAKITES  LEE 
San  Rafael,  California 


Gala's  True  Colors 


I  AM  OUTRAGED  BY  your  vile  and  dis- 
torted depiction  of  Gala  Dali's  character 
in  your  December  expose  by  John  Rich- 
ardson, entitled  "Dali's  Demon  Bride." 
Gala  Dali  was  an  incredible  woman. 
Those  who  truly  knew  her  knew  her  to 
be  kind,  sincere,  loving,  and  immensely 
nurturing  of  Dali  and  his  career.  I  was 
privileged  to  know  the  Dalis  for  the  last 
10  years  of  their  lives.  In  the  article, 
John  Richardson  and  Dali  biographer 
Ian  Gibson  leveled  several  pernicious  ac- 
cusations against  me  that  are  unequivo- 
cally unsubstantiated.  I  was  there;  your 
writers  were  not.  I  would  trust  that  your 
upscale  readers  are  sophisticated  enough 
to  consider  the  source  before  believing 
everything  they  read.  Disgraceful! 

JEFFREY  C.  FENHOLT 
Nichols  Hills,  Oklahoma 


Wartime  Lies 


CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS  is  dead-on  in 
describing  the  machinations  of  the  Clin- 
ton administration  ["Weapons  of  Mass 
Distraction,"  March].  Clinton's  adroit  ma- 
nipulation of  the  media  is  now  so  well 
known  as  to  be  legendary.  What  is  con- 
temptible is  that  he  would  try  to  main- 
tain his  lofty  approval  ratings  by  such  ac- 
tions as  the  bombing  of  Iraq  and  Sudan. 
That  people  would  have  to  die  to  main- 
tain the  facade  of  Clinton's  leadership  is 
yet  another  twist  in  the  tale. 

DENNIS  SAMS 
Fairburn,  Georgia 

MR.  HITCHENS  FAILS  to  realize  that 
President  Clinton  and  Prime  Minister 
Blair's  bombing  of  Iraq  was  a  pragmatic    = 
and  sound  decision. 

From  King  Hussein's  frail  appearance 
at  the  Wye  River  conference  in  October, 
it  was  clear  that  he  had  less  than  six 

MAY      1999 


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months  of  life  left.  Bombing  Iraq  was  a 
pre-emptive  strategy  in  anticipation  of 
what  would  undoubtedly  be  a  large  funei 
al.  Iraq  would  nave  had  a  golden  oppor- 
tunity to  bomb  Amman  and  consequently 
assassinate  many  of  the  world's  leaders.  It 
was  the  only  solution  to  a  logistical  night- 
marc  from  a  security  standpoint. 

While  Mr.  Ilitchens  has  every  right  to 
criticize  President  Clinton's  personal  be- 
havior, it's  lolly  to  overlook  the  need  that 
existed  to  cripple  Saddam  Hussein's  long- 
range-missile  capability.  In  light  of  the 
dignity  of  King  Hussein's  life,  and  the 


fad  that  President  Saddam  Hussein  re- 
garded him  as  an  enemy,  it  was  a  wise- 
decision  to  bomb  Iraq,  and  a  lilting  sig- 
nal to  send  King  Hussein,  letting  him 
know  that  he  could  rest  in  peace. 

K  II  I   KIIAI.AADI 
Montreal  Qui  i"  i 

THANK  VOO  lor  Christopher  llilchcns's 
scathing  indictment  of  the  president.  I 
seethed  with  anger  as  I  read  what  Hitch- 
ens  was  able  to  unearth, 

Although  I  admit  I  was  a  proponent  of 
the  air  strikes,  I  didn't  question  the  timing. 


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I  il  i  many  other  Americans,  I  was  wail 
to  see  what  great  plan  would  untold 
ter  the  air  strikes  to  remove  the  tyrar 
of  Saddam  Hussein.  Yet.  as  the  smc 
cleared,  not  only  did  we  lose  the  mand 
to  investigate  Iraq's  weapons  ol  mass 
struction,  but  we  settled  comfortably  i 
a  routine  of  jeopardizing  the  lives 
American  and  British  pilots  in  an  endl 
and  trivial  course  of  continuous  pinpric 
So.  as  with  most  things  relevant  to  tl 
administration,  I  have  come  away  skej 
cal  apropos  the  air  strikes.  It's  quite  ck 
that  Clinton  can  thank  his  lucky  stars  tl 
the  Senate  recently  gave  credence  to  t 
statistically  insignificant  popularity  "poll 
JEFFREY  TAPPAN  GOR1 
Raleigh,  North  Carol; 


In  regard  to  "The  Crucifixion  of  Matth 
Shepard,"  by  Melanie  Thernstrom  (Marc, 
Matthew 's  mother,  Judy,  asked  that  we  publish 
address  of  the  foundation  set  up  in  his  nai 
Inquiries  may  be  directed  to:  The  Matth 
Shepard  Foundation,  do  Beech  Street  Law  Offic 
123  South  Durbin  Street,  Casper,  Wyomi 
82601;  E-mail:  matlheirshepard@ayoming.co> 


CORRECTIONS:  On  page  262  of  our  prof 
of  Barbara  Walters  ("Major  Barbara,"  Mara 
the  name  of  the  late  ABC  anchor  Max  Robi 
son  was  misspelled. 

In  the  excerpt  from  Stelios  Galatopoulo. 
book  Maria  Callas:  Sacred  Monster  (March 
it  was  incorrectly  stated  that  Maria  Callas  n 
born  in  Greece.  She  was  born  in  New  York  Ch 

On  page  86  of  the  "Letters"  section  of  the  Mar 
issue,  we  published  a  letter  written  by  Nancy  Mey 
addressing  Ned Zeman's  article  on  Felicity  writ 
Riley  Weston  ("  Youth  or  Consequences,  "January).  T 
letter,  in  its  edited  form,  altered  her  intended  meai 
ing  The  letter  should  have  read:  "[Riley  Westor. 
was  given  a  coveted  job  on  a  writing  staff  known 
and  not  caring  that  she  didn  7  have  'the  write  stuff. 

In  the  Hollywood  portfolio  of  the  April  issu 
we  mistakenly  referred  to  both  Nicole  Kidma 
and  Catherine  Deneuve  as  "The  Lioness. " 


Letters  to  the  editor  should  be  sent  with  th 
writer's  name,  address,  and  daytime  phon 
number  to:  Vanity  Fair,  350  Madison  Avenut 
New  York,  New  York  1 00 17.  Address  electroni 
mail  to  vfmail@vf.com.  The  magazine  reserve 
the  right  to  edit  submissions,  which  may  be  put 
lished  or  otherwise  used  in  any  medium.  A 
submissions  become  the  property  of  Vanity  Fail 

Those  submitting  manuscripts,  photographs 
artwork,  or  other  material  to  Vanity  Fair  fo 
consideration  should  not  send  originals  unles 
requested  in  writing  to  do  so  by  Vanity  Fair.  Al 
unsolicited  materials  must  be  accompanied  b; 
a  self-addressed  overnight-delivery  envelope 
postage  paid.  However,  Vanity  Fair  is  not  re 
sponsible  for  unsolicited  submissions. 


MAY      19V1; 


magazine  is  not  a  mirror. 


Have  you  ever  seen  anyone  in  a  magazine  who 

seemed  even  vaguely  like  you  looking  back? 

(If  you  have,  turn  the  page.) 
Most  magazines  are  made  to  sell  us  a  fantasy  of  what  we're  supposed  to  be. 
■■'•dtk  Tney  reflect  wr,at  society  deems  to  be  a  standard, 

however  unrealistic  or  unattainable  that  standard  is. 

That  doesn't  mean  you  should  cancel  your  subscription. 
It  means  you  need  to  remember 

that  it's  just  ink  on  paper. 
And  that  whatever  standards  you  set  for  yourself, 
for  how  much  you  want  to  weigh, 
for  how  hard  you  work  out, 
or  how  many  times  you  make  it  to  the  gym, 
should  be  your  standards. 

Not  someone  else's. 


i* 


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I'LL  NEVER  EAT  LUNCH  IN  THIS  TOWN  AGAIN 

When  the  author  filed  an  affidavit  testifying  that  his  old  friend 

White  House  aide  Sidney  Blumenthal  had  repeated  the  president's  smears 

about  Monica  Lewinsky-thereby  giving  the  lie  to  Clinton's 

denial  of  such  tactics-the  author  was  denounced  by  those  around  him. 

He  tells  why  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise 


If  you  care  to  consult  the  Congression- 
al Record  of  the  Senate  trial  of  Bill 
Clinton  the  only  impeachment  trial 
ever  held  of  a  sitting  and  elected 
American  president- you  will  find 
that  the  last  item  of  business  is  the 
entering  of  three  affidavits  into  the 
official  account.  One  of  these  was 
sworn  by  me,  one  by  my  wife,  Carol  Blue, 
and  one  (witnessing  only  to  the  fact  that 
we  had  not  made  up  our  story  on  the  spot) 
by  Scott  Armstrong,  the  Senate  Watergate 
investigator  who  discovered  the  Nixon  tapes 


and  later  collaborated  with  Woodward  and 
Bernstein.  As  the  trial  ended  and  CNN 
went  straight  to  worldwide,  the  first  fea- 
tures blazoned  on  the  screen  were  my 
own— obscured  (the  features,  1  mean,  not 
the  screen)  by  an  ill-advised  new  beard, 
which  made  me  look  like  Rasputin  or  the 
Unabomber.  A  Clinton  witness— Mr.  Clin- 
ton chose  not  to  appear  at  his  own  trial- 
had  said  that  the  White  House  staff  had 
never  done  anything  to  spread  the  presi- 
dent's famous  and  desperate  smear  of 
Monica  Lewinsky  as  a  stalker  and  black- 
mailer. I  had  a  strongly  contrasting  im- 
pression and  had  decided,  whether  asked 
by  a  voter  or  a  reader  or  indeed  by  the 
House  Judiciary  Committee,  not  to 
keep  it  to  myself. 

If  there  was  a  lack  of  pro 
portion  here,  it  certainly 


didn't  escape  me.  It  astonishes  me  more 
in  retrospect  than  it  did  even  then.  All  I 
had  done,  in  essence,  was  repeat  a  true 
story  to  which  I  had  put  my  name,  in 
print  and  in  person,  many  times.  But  in 
the  deranged  atmosphere  of  Clinton's 
Washington  (a  culture  of  lies  that  I  be- 
lieve will  one  day  be  remembered  with 
whistles  and  groans  of  shame)  the  most 
anecdotal  truth,  told  by  a  most  seeming- 
ly negligible  individual,  was  enough  by 
itself  to  precipitate  a  minor  crisis.  The 
Clinton  trial  was  intended  to  move  grave- 
ly toward  a  predetermined  and  reassur- 


HAIL  TO  THE  CHIEF? 
Chief  executive 
Bill  Clinton  and  chief 
defender  Sidney 
Blumenthal  gaze  warily 
upon  chief  critic 
Christopher  Hitchens. 


&£> 


VANITY     FAIR 


Cartier's  newest  rings 
in  18K  white  or  yellow  gold.  $1,200. 


ATLANTA  BAL  HARBOUR  BEVERLY  HILLS  BOCA  RATON  BOSTON  CHEVY  CHASE  ■  CHICAGO  DALLAS  HONOLULU 
HOUSTON  LA  JOLLA  LAS  VEGAS  MONTREAL  NEW  YORK  PALM  BEACH  SAN  FRANCISCO  SEATTLE  SOUTH  COAST  PLAZA 
ST.LOUIS  ■  TORONTO     TROY     VANCOUVER     ARUBA  •  FREEPORT     NASSAU     SAN  JUAN     ST.  BARTHELEMY     ST.  MARTIN     ST   THOMAS 

Fot  a  copy  of  our  catalog,  call  1-800-CARTIER 


I  lichens 


I  lis  n§ends  know  thai  Sidney  was  interested  in"accessr 


ing  conclusion.  In  Hilaire  Belloc's 
words,  "The  stocks  were  sold;  the 
press  was  squared;  the  middle 
class  was  quite  prepared." 

I'd  like  to  say  thai  my  derailment 
of  a  dishonest  consensus  was  a 
proud  moment  in  my  life,  and 
reminded  me  why  I  had  become 
a  journalist  in  the  fust  place.  But 
I'll  never  quite  be  able  to  do  that. 
The  person  whose  dirty  job  it  was 
to  give  Clintonian  answers  was  an 
old  friend  of  mine.  1  could  give 
the  lie  to  Clinton  only  by  publicly  dis- 
agreeing with  this  same  friend,  whose 
name  is  Sidney  Blumenthal.  As  a  result, 
the  small  matter  of  my  testimony  was  en- 
gulfed by  a  subplot  about  treason,  loyalty, 
journalistic  etiquette,  and  the  placement 
for  Georgetown  dinner  parties.  Christo- 
pher Buckley,  the  best  novelist  of  Wash- 
ington life,  appeared  to  strain  for  effect 
when  he  described  in  The  Washington 
Post  the  ensuing  froth  as  the  equivalent 
for  our  crowd  of  the  Alger  Hiss-Whittak- 
er  Chambers  moment.  Concerning  the  ac- 
tual stakes,  this  seemed  (and  seems)  a 
heroic  exaggeration.  But  concerning  men- 
talities and  attitudes,  it  didn't.  As  it  hap- 
pened, Sidney  Blumenthal  and  I  had 
written  long  and  contrasting  reviews  of 
Sam  Tanenhaus's  tremendous  biography 
of  Whittaker  Chambers.  I  liked  it  a  bit 
more  than  he  did.  As  it  happened,  I  had 
once  received  extensive  and  absurd  over- 
praise from  Alger  Hiss.  As  it  happened, 
Christopher  Buckley's  father,  the  forbid- 
ding William  F.  (whose  biography  is  now 
being  written  by  Sam  Tanenhaus),  had  ig- 
nored the  advice  of  Whittaker  Chambers, 
who  had  implored  him  never  to  get  in- 
volved with  the  hysterical  wickedness  of 
Senator  Joseph  McCarthy.  As  it  hap- 
pened, the  confusion  about  that  bit  of  his- 
tory had  put  an  enduring  question  mark 
over  anyone  who  can  be  described  as  a 
"snitch,"  or  a  traitor,  or  a  "friendly  wit- 
ness" before  a  hostile  Congress. 

Believe  me  when  I  say  that  I  knew  all 
that  going  in.  During  the  next  few  days,  I 
was  to  see  that  the  word  "snitch"  can  be 
made  to  rhyme  with  Hitch.  I  think  Ger- 
aldo  Rivera  was  the  first  to  make  any- 
thing of  it;  anyway,  the  joke  got  a  good 
workout.  Indeed,  only  a  couple  of  weeks 
after  Rivera  first  got  his  laugh,  Maureen 
Dowd  recycled  the  gag  in  her  waning 
New  York  Times  column.  (This  is  the 
same  Ms.  Dowd,  by  the  way,  who  gave 


w 


1 


»* 


ALL  THE  PRESIDENT'S  MEN 

White  House  aide  Sidney  Blumenthal 

testifies  for  the  defense  during  the  Senate 

impeachment  trial,  February  3,  1999. 


away  the  whereabouts  of  Salman  Rush- 
die while  he  was  staying  in  my  apartment 
in  the  fall  of  1993— a  time  when,  if  I  was 
a  really  keen  rat,  I  could  have  made  my- 
self some  serious  reward  money.)  A 
snitch,  if  you  think  about  it,  is  supposed 
to  be  motivated  by  malice,  cynical  self- 
preservation,  or  hope  of  gain.  You  be- 
come a  snitch  by  dropping  an  anony- 
mous dime,  by  striking  a  plea  bargain,  by 
"naming  names"  to  get  yourself  immuni- 
ty, or  by  dumping  a  former  associate  to 
save  your  own  skin.  Nobody  has  made 
any  such  allegation  against  me.  However, 
I  here  repeat  my  charge  that  the  associ- 
ates of  Bill  Clinton  were  actively,  and 
with  taxpayers'  money,  spreading  false  in- 
formation against  truthful  female  wit- 
nesses. They  sought  to  destroy  the  char- 
acters of  these  women  by  off-the-record 
briefings,  and  by  underhanded  denuncia- 
tions. They  snitched,  in  fact.  In  doing 
what  I  did,  I  testified  against  the  author- 
ities and  not  to  them. 

I  had  the  alternative— as  who  does  not? 
—of  keeping  quiet.  Here's  how  it  goes  in 
Washington,  where  I  have  now  lived  for 
nearly  two  decades.  The  government,  in 
the  person  of  X  or  Y,  takes  you  into  its 
confidence.  Now,  here  is  a  lie,  or  a  half- 
truth,  which  we  the  administration  wish  to 
have  widely  circulated  or  believed.  You 
are  being  briefed,  let  us  add,  in  confi- 
dence. We  know  we  can  count  on  you. 
Thus,  you  are  sworn.  You're  in.  You  hard- 
ly notice  the  oath  being  administered.  If 
you  breach  the  confidence— well,  as  they 
used  to  say  in  the  trade,  then  comes 
ethics.  You  will  know  if  you  have  commit- 
ted an  ethical  breach,  because  you  will 
lose  your  "access."  Capisce? 


I  have  long  thought  that  this  is 
slightly  too  easy,  and  that  the 
state  should  have  to  work  a  bit 
harder  than  that  to  get  the  press 
on  its  team.  Do  you  remember 
when  Ronald  Reagan  complained 
so  self-pityingly  about  the  eruption 
of  the  Iran-contra  matter?  If  it  had 
not  been  for  "that  rag  in  Beirut"— 
as  he  said  of  the  Lebanese  maga- 
zine Al-Shiraa,  which  first  broke 
the  story  of  Oliver  North's  secret 
cake-and-Bible  run  with  the  mul- 
lahs—the whole  story  of  hostage 
trading  and  illegal  arms  dealing  would 
have  remained  a  secret.  And  it  was  ab- 
solutely true  that,  until  the  Levantine  sheet 
published  the  story,  knowledge  of  North's 
name  and  potency  was  the  private  property 
of  a  few  Washington-bureau  chiefs  who 
knew  the  score.  How  reluctant  they  were  to 
share,  and  how  well  I  remember  them  all. 
It  was  in  those  years,  when  an  overstaffed 
and  overpaid  Washington  press  corps  was 
leading  too  fat  and  happy  a  life,  that  I  first 
got  to  know  Sidney. 

Not  only  have  we  often  eaten  and  drunk 
in  each  other's  homes,  and  watched  each 
other's  children  grow  (it  was  at  the  1991 
Bar  Mitzvah  of  Sidney's  firstborn,  Max, 
that  I  made  up  with  Christopher  Buckley, 
who  hadn't  spoken  to  me  for  years  after 
something  I  wrote  about  his  father-in-law 
during  Iran-contra),  but  we  have  also  done 
some  journalistic  and  political  soldiering 
together.  We  jointly  inaugurated  the  Osric 
Dining  Society  (Osric  is  the  fawning  cour- 
tier in  Hamlet),  an  annual  anti-awards  din- 
ner at  which  the  prize  went  to  the  most 
butt-kissing  piece  of  journalism  published 
that  year.  When  Rushdie  came  to  Washing- 
ton that  time,  we  helped  him  meet  some 
useful  people.  And  when  the  Bosnian  prime 
minister,  Haris  Silajdzic,  came,  to  appeal 
for  his  murdered  country  and  countrymen, 
we  did  the  same.  When  Sidney  was  briefly 
detained  by  Secret  Service  agents  for  mak- 
ing a  joke  about  Dole's  impending  termi- 
nal experience  at  the  gruesome  Republican 
National  Convention  in  San  Diego  in  1996, 
I  stayed  by  Sidney's  side,  leaving  it  only  to 
bring  him  what  may  have  been  his  first 
vodka  and  tonic.  Not  only  was  it  a  plea- 
sure to  be  in  his  company— he  is  much 
more  humorous  than  his  TV  appearances 
suggest— but  in  our  limited  way,  on  all  of 
these  occasions,  we  were  at  least  trying  to 
speak  truth  to  power. 

Now,  I  always  knew,  and  all  his  friends 
knew,  that  Sidney  was  also  interested  in 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     1999 


We  all  know  the  eyes.  100  proof: 


Fonda  folded,  Bogart  buckled. 
With  her,  every  woman  holds  power 
Every  man  holds  his  breath. 


ijour  sea 


lb  el  is-. 


She  will  suffer  no  man's  insolence  without  payback, 
But  when  she  suffers,  she  does  so  nobly. 


We  have  embarked  with  a  woman  whose  legend  is  her  adventure. 
And  it's  her  eyes  that  have  charted  the  course  across 
Deep  pools  of  pride  and  danger. 


Look  at  them  again,  and  you  know 
Who's  driving. 


Fasten  your  seatbelts 

Bette  Davis  arrives  on  TCM. 


TCM.turner.com 


Bette  Davis  Week 
A  57-movie  tribute 
Begins  Monday,  May  3rd 
Only  on  Turner  Classic  Movies 


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r.ifc  CaineCOO  II9«I)   f.  1999  Turner  Cl«sfi:  Mrjviej  A  Time  Vitmc  Company  All  K  ■-■ 


6  How  did  the  White  House  expect  to  get  away  with  the  lie? 


power  and  "access."  I  didn't  Ihink, 
as  some  did,  that  he  strayed  off  the 
reservation  by  being  too  close  to 
Gary  Hart.  Even  in  the  past  seven 
years,  when  he  sometimes  seemed 
to  be  ventriloquized  by  Clinton  m 
the  pages  of  The  New  Republic  and 
The  New  Yorker— I  defended  him. 
(He  was  often  beaten  up  in  print 
by  people  who  didn't  have  the  guts 
to  attack  Clinton  himself.)  I  did  no- 
tice that,  without  saying  anything, 
he  dropped  the  subject  of  the  Os- 
ric  Dining  Society.  In  retrospect,  it 
astonishes  me  that  we  avoided  a  major 
quarrel  for  so  long.  1  had  become  utterly 
convinced,  as  early  as  the  1992  campaign, 
that  there  was  something  in  the  Clinton 
makeup  that  was  quite  seriously  nasty.  The 
automatic  lying,  the  glacial  ruthlessness, 
the  self-pity,  the  indifference  to  repeated  ex- 
posure, the  absence  of  any  tincture  of  con- 
science or  remorse,  the  awful  piety— these 
were  symptoms  of  a  psychopath.  And  it 
kept  on  getting  worse  and  worse— but  not 
for  Clinton  himself,  who  could  usually  find 
a  way  of  sacrificing  a  subordinate  and  then 
biting  his  lip  in  the  only  gesture  of  contri- 
tion he  had  learned  to  master.  (After  read- 
ing the  testimony  of  Juanita  Broaddrick, 
I'll  never  be  able  to  think  of  his  lip  biting 
in  the  same  way  again.  But  no  doubt 
Arthur  Schlesinger  will  be  on  hand  to  as- 
sure us  that  all  men  lie  about  rape.) 

So  here's  what  happened  between  Sidney 
and  me,  and  here's  how  the  "com- 
partmentalization"  broke  down.  In 
March  of  last  year,  I  came  back  to  Wash- 
ington for  the  first  time  since  the  Lewinsky 
scandal  had  broken.  (I  had  been  teaching 
at  the  University  of  California.)  The  first 
thing  that  Carol  and  I  did  was  to  have  a 
catch-up  lunch  with  Sidney.  And  I  have  to 
say,  it  was  a  shock.  He  was  rather  grim 
and  businesslike,  and  in  a  very  defensive 
mode.  He  could  think  of  his  boss  only  as 
the  victim  of  a  frame-up.  The  preceding 
Sunday  on  60  Minutes,  Kathleen  Willey 
had  gone  public  with  her  accusation  of  a 
crude  lunge  made  by  Clinton,  and  what 
impressed  me  most  at  the  time,  and  de- 
pressed me,  too,  was  the  tone  of  voice  Sid- 
ney used  in  discussing  this.  "Yeah,  her  poll 
numbers  are  high  now,  but  they'll  be  down 
by  the  end  of  the  week.  You'll  see."  There 
was  a  sort  of  "We'll  take  care  of  her"  tone 
that  I  didn't  like,  and  Carol  and  I  couldn't 
look  at  each  other.  We  felt  the  same  con- 
straint when  he  told  us  that  "what  people 


c;? 


FACE  TIME 

Hillary  Clinton  with  the  Hitchenses 

as  they  celebrate  Sidney  Blumenthal's  46th 

birthday  at  his  Takoma  Park  home, 

November  5,  1994. 


need  to  understand"  was  that  Monica 
Lewinsky  was  a  stalker,  an  unstable  minx 
who  had  been  threatening  Clinton  and 
telling  him  that  if  he  didn't  have  sex  with 
her  she  would  say  he  had  anyway.  This  was 
no  informal  chat;  we  weren't  asked  to  keep 
that  interpretation  to  ourselves;  the  pres- 
ence was  that  of  Sidney  but  the  spin  was 
His  Master's  Voice.  Sidney's  account  as 
given  to  Starr  is  the  same  as  I  remember 
except  that  to  me  he  left  out  Clinton's 
breathtaking  claim  to  be  the  victim  and 
prisoner  in  Arthur  Koestler's  Darkness  at 
Noon.  I  feel  flattered  in  retrospect  that  my 
old  friend  didn't  try  to  sell  me  this  line.  I 
remember  saying,  rather  feebly,  "Are  you 
sure  you  want  to  get  involved  in  this  kind 
of  thing— in  going  after  the  reputation  of 
these  women?"  He  left  me  two  folders  of 
pro-Clinton  clips  and  documents,  which  I 
wish  I'd  kept,  and  went  off  back  to  the 
White  House.  The  Washington  Post,  if  you 
are  interested,  has  since  published  not  just 
the  menu  of  that  lunch  but  also  the  recipe 
for  the  salad,  should  you  desire  to  prepare 
one  in  the  comfort  of  your  own  home. 
This  is,  in  some  ways,  a  very  silly  town. 

And,  at  the  time,  this  seemed  like  no 
more  than  a  disappointing  lunch.  Our  old 
pal  had  said  one  rather  disagreeable  thing 
and  had  asked  us  to  believe  in  one  self- 
evidently  preposterous  theory.  (A  president, 
if  you  think  about  it  for  a  second,  just  can't 
be  stalked  in  his  own  Oval  Office.)  Howev- 
er, as  time  went  by,  the  significance  of  the 
conversation  metamorphosed.  I  became 
convinced  that,  a  few  weeks  before  the 
lunch,  Kathleen  Willey  had  been  threatened 
in  person,  had  received  threats  against  her 
children  by  name,  and  earlier  had  had  her 


car  brutally  vandalized.  I  discov-  I 
ered  that,  within  days  of  the  lunch, 
she  received  a  telephone  call  from 
a  private  detective  named  Jared 
Stern.  Hired  to  invigilate  her,  he 
had  sickened  of  his  work  and  de- 
cided to  give  her  an  anonymous 
call  warning  her  that  she  had  influ- 
ential enemies.  It  also  appeared 
that  Ms.  Willey  had  been  subjected 
to  pressure  by  a  politically  con- 
nected tycoon  named  Nathan  Lan- 
dow,  whom  I  knew  by  reputation 
as  one  of  the  less  decorative  mem- 
bers of  Clinton's  soft-money  world.  (Asked 
by  the  grand  jury  whether  he  spoke  to  Ms. 
Willey  about  her  testimony  in  the  Paula 
Jones  lawsuit  on  his  own  behalf  or  on  the 
president's,  Mr.  Landow  has  taken  the  Fifth 
Amendment.)  I  refuse  to  believe  for  a  sec- 
ond that  Sidney  knew  anything  about  this, 
but  in  the  week  that  we  talked,  the  White 
House  "found"  and  released  Ms.  Willey's 
correspondence  with  Clinton.  I  say  "found" 
because  when  these  same  letters  had  been 
subpoenaed  in  the  Jones  case  in  January 
1998,  they  couldn't  be  located  anywhere. 
Just  another  day  in  Clinton's  Washington. 

Then  came  Clinton's  Senate  trial.  Sudden- 
ly, it  was  important  to  the  White  House 
to  deny  that  Monica  Lewinsky  had  ever 
been  slandered.  Why  was  it  important,  and 
why  would  they  run  the  risk  of  telling  such 
a  transparent  lie?  It  was  important  because 
it  bore  on  the  matter  of  obstruction  of  jus- 
tice. She  had  been,  before  she  unavoidably 
lost  touch  with  "the  big  creep,"  rewarded 
with  a  job  search  in  return  for  a  perjured 
affidavit.  The  rapid  appearance  in  print  of 
the  "stalker"  allegation  could  be  viewed  as 
a  warning  to  keep  silent— a  hint  of  what 
might  be  said  of  her  if  she  didn't  stay  per- 
jured. It  hit  me  very  abruptly,  when  I  was 
having  a  drink  with  Erik  Tarloff,  Chris 
Buckley's  only  rival  as  D.C.'s  first  satirical 
fictionist.  As  well  as  having  contributed  to 
speeches  for  Clinton  and  Gore,  Erik  is 
married  to  Laura  D' Andrea  Tyson,  former- 
ly Clinton's  chief  economic  adviser.  He's  a 
shrewd  guy,  and  he's  seen  a  lot  of  the  Clin- 
ton M.O.  "Notice  how  they  always  trash 
the  accusers,"  he  said.  "They  destroy  their 
reputations.  If  Monica  hadn't  had  that  blue 
dress,  they  were  getting  ready  to  portray 
her  as  a  fantasist  and  erotomaniac.  Imag- 
ine what  we'd  all  be  thinking  about  her 
now."  At  that  moment,  I  became  a  hostage 
to  what  I'd  been  told  at  lunch.  That  day, 
it  had  been  one   continued  on  page  so 


VANITY     FAIR 


Imagine  all  the  uses  for  this 

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tto*/\  mate  sH  i-to 
s&ase  of  homor. 


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Inside: 


make  a  wish. 


For  birthdays,  anniversaries,  or 
no  particular  reason  at  all. 


They're  cards  you  can  send  any  day. 


But  are  far  from  the  everyday. 


ln9ide:  very  impress*" 


AMERICAN  GREETINGS 

...says  it  best 

For  a  retailer  near  you,  call  1-800-777-4891.  Or  visit  us  online  at  www.americangreetings.com  or  AOL  Keyword:  American  Greetings     ©AGC,  Inc. 


Turning  heads 
day  and  night 


Reverso 
Duetto 

When  day 

turns  to  night, 

an  elegant 

woman  turns 

her  Reverso  Duetto's  case 

to  conceal  its  daytime 

grace  and  reveal  its 

sparkling  evening  beauty 

It  is  a  magical  moment 

that  others  love  to  share. 

The  Reverso  has  always 

turned  heads,  and 

never  more  beautifully 

than  now. 


«Jaeger-leCoultre> 


For  your  free  copy  of  the  Manufacture's  Book  of  Timepieces  contact  Jaeger-LeCoultre.  P.O.  Box  1608, 
Winchester.  VA  22604.  tel.  (800)  JLC-Time.  www.mjlc.com  Dials  reversed  for  photo. 


FOR   MORE    INFORMATION    OR  TO   ORDER  OUR   72-PAGE   COLLECTION    FOLIO.    PLEASE    CALL    1-800-KREISS    1 

TO    RECEIVE    OUR   LUXURY    BED-LINENS    BROCHURE   CALL    1-888-LINEN44   OR  VI  SIT  US  ON  THE  WEB  AT:  WW  WKREISS. COM 

ATLANTA    CHICAGO    CORAL  GABLES     DALLAS     DENVER    HOUSTON     LAGUNANIGUEL     LA  |OLLA     LAS  VEGAS     LOS  ANGELES 

NEW  YORK    PALM  DESERT    SAN   FRANCISCO    SAUDI  ARABIA    SCOTTSDALE     SEATTLE 


SEANCONNERY 


/~vL  L"T  h  Lvi 


NE'ZETA^J 


%*> 


■ ' 


HETRAP  IS  S 


I 


PG  13  PARENTS  STRONGLY  CAUTIONfO 


m 


JuMAMIll  www.loxniovies.coni 


April  30th  Only  in  Theatres 


t  In  doing  what  I  did,  I  testified  against  the  authorities.  % 


CONTINUED  FROM   PAOI  I  ll  I  II  B  . 

but  with  the  passage  of  time  it 
had  become  another.  I  told  I  rile 
what  lil  been  told.  He  told  me 
he'd  heard  the  same  thing 

How.  then,  did  the  White  House 
expect  to  get  away  with  the  lie? 
The)  expected  to  get  away  with  it 
because  they  had  made  everyone 
complicit.  In  a  city  where  the  main 
"source"  is  the  government,  the  eti- 
quette about  sources  masks  the 
plain  fact  that  the  government  has 
a  lock  on  the  press.  (One  survey, 
which  took  2.X50  news  stories  from  The 
Washington  Post  and  The  New  York  Times, 
found  that  78  percent  of  the  stories  were 
attributed  to  government  sources  either  on 
or  off  the  record.  Talk  about  ventriloquism. 
The  state  uses  the  media  as  a  megaphone.) 

Here's  what  I  mean.  On  January  23, 
Charles  Ruff,  the  counsel  to  the  president, 
told  the  Senate  trial  the  following  whop- 
per: "The  White  House,  the  president,  the 
president's  agents,  the  president's  spokes- 
persons—no one  has  ever  trashed,  threat- 
ened, maligned,  or  done  anything  else  to 
Monica  Lewinsky.  No  one."  (I  know  who 
the  president's  spokespersons  are.  I  recall 
thinking  at  the  time.  But  who  are  these 
"agents"?)  The  following  day.  James  War- 
ren, the  excellent  Washington-bureau  chief 
of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  was  asked  to  com- 
ment on  CNN: 

That  comment  by  Ruff  was  so  palpably  un- 
true. If  I  had  a  buck  for  every  person  at  the 
White  House  who  bad-mouthed  her  to  me 
last  January  I  could  leave  the  set  now  and 

head  off  to  Antigua. 

I  barely  know  a  single  reporter  who 
could  not  have  sworn  to  the  same.  And 
indeed.  I  do  know  at  least  one  reporter 
who  was  approached  by  the  House  Judi- 
ciary Committee  and  asked  to  testify.  He 
said  no.  He  has  to  live  here,  and  he  can't 
commit  his  newspaper.  I  don't  have  to  live 
here.  Still  and  all,  I  wish  it  had  been  Ruff 
rather  than  Sidney  I  heard  putting  the  sto- 
ry about.  As  it  is.  the  state  now  has  a  new 
weapon  against  the  press.  Don't  be  calling 
the  president  a  liar.  You'll  be  accused  of 
snitching  on  his  juniors. 

hen  Susan  Bogart.  senior  investiga- 
tive counsel  of  the  House  Judiciary 
Committee,  contacted  me  in  the 
closing  days  of  the  trial,  she  asked  a  ques- 
tion to  which  she  already  knew  the  an- 
swer. I  had  put  a  version  of  the  lunch 


■  -„ 


Christopher  Hitchens 


-OLH'JAl'ST 


BEARDING  THE  LION 

After  the  news  of  his  affidavit 

leaked,  Hitchens  defended  himself 

on  CNN,  February  8,  1999. 


with  Sidney  in  print,  in  the  London  Inde- 
pendent of  September  13,  1998.  I  had  told 
many  people.  I  was  in  the  process  of  writ- 
ing a  column  for  a  small,  pro-Clinton 
weekly  magazine,  in  which  I  was  propos- 
ing to  tell  it  again.  Furthermore,  the  story 
had  the  merit  of  being  true,  and  of  being 
revealing  of  the  squalid  underside  of  Clin- 
tonism.  Every  time  I  told  it.  I  now  realize. 
I  was  placing  a  friend  in  potential  jeop- 
ardy, but  only  because  he  had  elected  to 
join  the  president's  bodyguard.  In  order  to 
disown  the  story,  I  would  have  had  to  join 
the  general  agreement  about  "putting  this 
behind  us  and  moving  on."  Well.  I  didn't 
want  to  join  any  bloody  agreement  about 
putting  things  behind  us  and  moving  on.  I 
thought  it  was  a  disgrace  to  have  a  mock 
trial,  invisibly  sponsored  by  the  stock  mar- 
ket and  the  opinion  polls,  at  which  the 
defendant  didn't  appear  and  at  which  all 
efforts  to  mention  Kathleen  Willey  and 
Juanita  Broaddrick  were  quashed.  The 
stocks  are  sold,  the  press  is  squared— in- 
clude me  out.  To  disown  the  story,  also,  I 
would  have  had  to  risk  committing  per- 
jury, in  order  to  accuse  myself  of  having 
lied  in  the  first  place,  in  order  to  safe- 
guard a  dirty  tactic  used  by  Clinton's 
proxies.  Well,  thanks,  but  then  again,  no 
thanks.  That  would've  been  Clintonism 
squared  or  cubed.  And  why  didn't  I  run 
out  the  clock,  people  ask  me,  and  get 
clever  with  lawyers  and  delaying  tactics? 
That's  easy.  The  trial  of  Clinton  was  in  its 
closing  stages.  If  I  strung  the  prosecution 
along,  anything  they  later  established  from 
me  could  be  used  only  against  someone 
other  than  the  Godfather. 

So  I  said  that,  if  need  be,  I  would 
confirm  the  Lewinsky  stalker  stuff  under 


oath.   I  also  put  in  the  material 

about  Kathleen  Willey,  without 

being  asked,  so  as  to  help  estab- 
lish the  White  House  stale  of 
mind  By  the  time  you  read  this, 
the  name  Willey  may  be  much 
better  known  than  il  is  now, 
and  people  will  be  ashamed 
that  they  ever  spoke  so  fatuously 
about  "consensual  sex."  No  one 
has  bothered  to  notice  that  I 
went  out  of  my  way  to  include 
Willey  in  the  affidavit,  because 
Sidney  hasn't  been  asked  about 
it  under  oath  and  doesn't  know  much 
about  it  anyway,  and  therefore  it  doesn't 
help  the  only  story  that  people  seem  to 
care  about,  which  is  fratricide  between 
Sidney  and  me.  A  silly  town,  as  I  said, 
and  sometimes  a  spiteful  one,  too.  A 
town  where,  as  the  Chinese  say,  when 
the  finger  points  at  the  moon,  the  idiots 
look  at  the  finger. 


The  rest  of  the  conversation  with  the 
House  Judiciary  Committee— actually 
the  bulk  of  the  conversation— consisted 
of  my  making  a  moral  stipulation.  This 
affidavit  was  being  given  in  the  trial  of 
one  person  only:  the  president.  It  was  be- 
ing given  as  a  rebuttal  to  a  White  House 
strategy  of  deception.  Since  grand-jury 
testimony  had  elicited  the  fact  that  Clin- 
ton was  the  sole  author  of  the  "stalker" 
slander,  that  he  had  passed  it  to  Sidney 
and  probably  others,  and  had  seen  it  get 
into  the  press.  I  wasn't  doing  more  than 
filling  in  one  blank.  In  Senate  evidence. 
Sidney  had  said  that  he  now  felt  he'd 
been  lied  to  by  his  president.  He  wasn't 
the  only  one  who  had  that  feeling.  So  it 
would  obviously  be  grotesque  to  proceed 
against  him  for  the  mere  offense  of  giving 
an  evasive  answer.  Any  use  of  my  affidavit 
for  this  purpose,  I  said,  would  cause  me 
to  repudiate  it  and  risk  being  held  in  con- 
tempt. I  would  testify  again  only  about 
Kathleen  Willey.  There  are  no  absolute 
guarantees  in  this  world,  but  I  do  know 
that  what  I  said  was  understood.  Anyway, 
the  offense  of  perjury  has  been  so  down- 
wardly defined  by  the  Clintonoids  that  it 
can't  seriously  be  charged  against  a  per- 
jurer's apprentice.  Morally,  also,  it  has 
been  defined  by  the  Democratic  leader- 
ship as  an  offense  only  slightly  worse  than 
telling  the  truth. 

And  for  doing  that,  I  have  already  been 
held  in  contempt.  But  in  Clinton's  Washing- 
ton, it  is  a  positive  honor  to  be  despised.  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


1. 800. HRD. ROCK  for  reservations  or  visit  www.hardrockhotel.ee 


Investigation 


THE  PENTAGON'S  MIC  SECRET 

Thousands  of  American  veterans  suffer 
from  debilitating  Gulf  War-related  illnesses. 

But  the  origins  have  remained  a  mystery. 

A  crusading  molecular  biologist  and  internal 

military  documents  now  suggest  a 

shocking  scenario:  the  Pentagon's  possible 

use  on  its  own  soldiers  of  an  illicit  and 

secret  anthrax  vaccine 

BY  GARY  MATSUMOTO 


Veterinarian  Dr.  Herbert  Smith  negoti- 
ates the  nine  paces  across  his  porch 
to  the  driveway  of  his  house  as 
though  he  were  on  a  high  wire,  ad- 
justing each  deliberate  step,  shifting 
his  weight  from  a  walking  cane  in  his 
left  hand  to  another  in  his  right. 
Smith  lives  in  Ijamsville,  Maryland, 
a  subdivision  no-man's-land  of  two- 
acre  lots  and  empty  vistas  where  the 
exurbs  of  Washington,  D.C.,  com- 
mingle with  those  of  Baltimore. 
He  wears  black  leather  wrist  pads  Velcro'd  from 
palm  to  forearm  and  a  pair  of  ragged  government- 
issue  elbow  pads  to  protect  himself  from  the  falls 
he  frequently  experiences.  "I'm  subject  to  what's 
called  neurapraxia— damage  to  the  nerves,"  ex- 
plains Smith.  "Like  with  diabetics,  who  then  wind 
up  with  amputations.  I'm  trying  to  avoid  that." 

On  reaching  the  driveway,  he  straightens  up  to 
shake  my  hand.  You  can  still  see  the  outlines  of  the 


VANITY     FA 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY      HARRY      BENSON 


MAY      1999 


Middle-of-the-road  is  for  painted  yellow  lines. 

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suspension,  optional  leather-trimmed  interior  and  more,  Ford  Contour  is  a  far  cry  from  your  average, 


in-of-the-mill,  4-door  sedan. 


It's  no  wonder  one  drive  will  surprise  you. 


Ford  Contour 


Available  ABS  and  all-speed  traction  control.    Advanced  road-handling  suspension. 
100,000  wiles  between  tune-ups'.'   Automobile  Magazine  "All-Star." 

ional  equipment  "Under  normal  driving  conditions  with  routine  fluid  and  filter  changes 


uilt 


;   tford 


I?  Last 


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www  fordvehicles  com 


Inu'sliifiilion 


elite  athlete  he  once  was.  Dr,  Smith,  59 
years  old,  is  also  Colonel  Smith,  Green 
Beret.  His  subordinates  nicknamed  him 
"Supei  rrooper,"  in  deference  to  Ins  gung- 
ho  attitude  and  Ins  once  Olympian  phys- 
ique. When  he  entered  airborne  school 
al  I  on  Benning  in  April  1966  he  set  out 
to  be  No.  I  in  a  class  of  f>K7  by  hailing 
his  drill  instructors  to  drive  him  harder 
than  the  others  "So,  they  targeted  me.  I 
must've  done  a  thousand  push-ups  a  day. 
But  I  knew  it  was  all  a  game.  I  never  got 
mad,  never  lost  my  cool.  There  were  a 
couple  o\'  navy  SI  \ts  there.  They  were 


ii    iieil  his  condition    without  success. 
In  Octobei    1991    he  left  active  duly,  but 

continued  to  see  physicians  al  the  Walter 

Reed  Army  Medical  (enter  in  Washing- 
ton, D.C.  He  didn't  regard  the  problem 
as  serious  until  the  seizures  started.  Not 

grand  mal,  fall-on-the-floor,  foam-at-the- 
mouth  seizures,  but  complex  partial  ones, 
in  which  he  appeared  lo  be  functioning 
normally  but  was  actually  on  autopilot, 
without  awareness  of  what  he  was  doing. 
"I  skipped  periods  of  lime,"  he  explains. 
"I  was  in  a  car  driving  towards  Baltimore 
on  1-70,  and  the  next  thing  I  know,  I'm 


theory,  still  unpmvcn,  blames  the  syn- 
drome  on  low-dose  exposures  to  chemical- 
weapons  fallout. 

About  40,000  veterans  have  registered 
with  the  Department  of  Defense's  Com* 
prehensive  Clinical  Evaluation  Program 
(C.C.E.P)  lor  Gulf  War  illnesses;  another 
70,000  or  so  are  tallied  by  the  V  A.  A 
C.C.E.P.  spokesperson  says  the  numbers 
do  not  overlap;  i.e.,  the  total  number  of 
110,000  to  115,000  is  accurate.  Of  these. 
18,000  are  undiagnosed,  and  are  merely  be- 
ing treated  for  their  symptoms.  To  date,  the 
federal  government  has  sponsored  140  or 


"A  doctor  there  accused  me  of  bleeding  myself  to  fake  anemia/7  says  Colonel  Smith. 


pretty  tough  guys.  But  they  weren't  as 
tough  as  me."  Until  1991,  Smith  ran  P.T. 
(physical  training)  programs;  the  ones 
back  in  the  80s  were  notoriously  grueling, 
earning  him  a  nickname:  "Dr.  Death." 
He  smiles  at  this  but  is  unapologetic.  "I 
wore  'em  into  the  ground.  In  a  fun  way, 
not  in  a  brutal  way." 

Today,  a  thick  purple  welt  juts  from 
Smith's  forehead— an  angry  bulge  from 
hairline  to  brow.  Even  on  perfectly  flat 
ground,  he  falls  a  lot. 

The  symptoms  first  appeared  in  Janu- 
ary 1991,  the  same  month,  Smith  says, 
that  he  got  his  first  shot  of  something 
that  does  not  appear  on  his  immuniza- 
tion card  or  in  his  records— a  mysterious 
vaccine,  described  to  him  only  as  "Vac 
A."  He  was  then  in  Saudi  Arabia  training 
Kuwaiti  medical  personnel  in  disaster  re- 
lief. Sometimes  the  pain  was  so  bad  in 
his  right  hand  he  couldn't  hold  a  fork  at 
meals.  The  next  time  it  would  be  his  left 
hand,  never  both  hands  at  the  same  time. 
By  May  his  joints  ached  and  his  lymph 
nodes  were  swollen,  and  he  had  a  fever 
and  a  red  rash  on  his  chest  and  legs.  He 
was  constantly  fatigued.  It  hurt  to  walk.  It 
hurt  to  brush  his  teeth.  After  the  invasion 
he  wanted  to  stay  on  to  help  the  Kuwaitis 
rebuild,  but  the  symptoms  were  getting 
worse,  and  he  had  no  idea  what  was 
wrong.  He  knew  he  needed  treatment 
back  in  the  States. 

Just  before  he  got  on  a  transport  head- 
ing home,  one  of  his  medical  officers,  who 
had  seen  similar  symptoms  in  other  soldiers, 
came  up  to  him  and  said,  "When  you  get 
home,  check  out  the  vaccines.  I  think 
you've  got  a  problem  with  them."  Smith 
had  received  vaccinations  for  hepatitis  and 
tetanus,  and  a  second  shot  of  Vac  A, 
which  was  entered  into  his  records  on  Feb- 
ruary 14,  1991. 

Back  at  Fort  Meade,  Smith  was  given 
a  desk  job  while  the  military  doctors  in- 


outside  of  Washington,  D.C,  on  1-95,  and 
I've  got  no  clue  how  I  got  there." 

One  night,  his  worst,  Smith  became 
completely  disoriented.  "I  had  blacked 
out  for  an  hour,  hour  and  a  half.  I  had  to 
call  my  wife  on  the  phone  to  find  my  way 
home.  I  was  probably  25  miles  away.  I 
was  an  emotional  mess  because  by  then  I 
had  to  admit  to  myself  that  something 
was  wrong  with  me." 

By  this  time  Smith  was  seeing  Dr.  Mi- 
chael Roy,  an  internist  at  Walter  Reed. 
Roy  diagnosed  Smith's  condition  as  "so- 
matization disorder,"  a  psychosomatic  ill- 
ness in  which  a  patient  becomes  so  ob- 
sessed with  an  imaginary  disease  that  he 
begins  to  exhibit  its  symptoms. 

Smith  was  not  the  only  Gulf  War  veter- 
an experiencing  mysterious  symptoms. 
In  late  1991  and  early  1992,  some  from 
a  reserve  unit  at  Indiana's  Fort  Benjamin 
Harrison  reported  sick  with  a  constellation 
of  symptoms  that  have  since  been  associ- 
ated with  Gulf  War  syndrome:  joint  pain, 
headaches,  fatigue,  memory  loss,  and  rashes. 
Reservists  in  Georgia  and  Alabama  made 
similar  complaints.  Military  doctors  mostly 
dismissed  the  symptoms  as  psychosomatic 
or  stress-related.  As  the  number  of  people 
affected  began  to  grow,  several  govern- 
ment studies  were  commissioned,  including 
those  of  the  Presidential  Advisory  Com- 
mittee on  Gulf  War  Veterans'  Illnesses,  the 
Institute  of  Medicine,  and  the  Senate 
Committee  on  Veterans'  Affairs.  By  1996 
all  of  them  had  concluded  that  there  was 
no  single  disease  that  could  account  for 
all  the  different  symptoms  associated  with 
Gulf  War  syndrome.  The  Department  of 
Defense  has  examined  at  least  20  possible 
health  hazards,  including  pyridostigmine 
bromide  (P.B.)  pills  taken  by  the  Gulf  War 
troops  to  help  protect  against  chemical 
warfare,  the  insect  repellent  deet  and  vari- 
ous pesticides  used  by  the  soldiers,  and 
Kuwaiti  oil-fire  smoke.  A  frequently  repeated 


so  related  research  programs,  exploring 
everything  from  microwaves  to  biological 
weapons,  which  have  been  funded  at  a  cost 
to  the  taxpayer  of  more  than  $130  million. 

Colonel  Smith  is  one  of  the  highest-ranking 
officers  on  full  disability  for  Gulf  War 
syndrome.  He  believes  he  might  have 
never  known  the  nature  of  his  illness  had  it 
not  been  for  the  efforts  of  Dr.  Pamela  Asa, 
a  Ph.D.  molecular  biologist  who  for  the 
past  five  years  has  waged  a  one-woman 
battle  with  the  Pentagon  over  the  diagnosis 
of  Gulf  War  syndrome  and  its  cause.  She 
has  conducted  her  own  research  without  a 
penny  from  the  government  or  any  other 
benefactor.  Because  of  Asa's  work,  Colonel 
Smith  has  become  more  than  a  poster  boy 
for  a  public-health  disaster.  Asa  believes 
that  in  Smith's  blood  there  is  evidence  that 
may  hold  the  answer  to  why  so  many  veter- 
ans of  the  Gulf  War  are  sick. 

Vanity  Fair  has  uncovered  military  doc- 
uments that  show  the  Department  of  De- 
fense made  plans  to  run  a  clandestine  trial 
of  experimental  vaccines  and  medical 
products  during  Desert  Shield  and  Desert 
Storm.  Military  physicians  called  this  ef- 
fort "the  Manhattan  Project."  While  many 
of  these  vaccines  were  never  used,  Vanity 
Fair  has  found  evidence  suggesting  that 
the  Pentagon  may  have  developed  a  mod- 
ified version  of  its  F.D.A.-licensed  anthrax 
vaccine  during  an  operation  called  "Proj- 
ect Badger."  If  Pam  Asa  is  right,  an  ex- 
perimental substance  that  causes  incur- 
able diseases  in  lab  animals  was  mixed 
into  an  unknown  number  of  doses— in 
essence  creating  a  new,  untested  anthrax 
vaccine.  The  actual  administration  of  such 
a  vaccine  would  have  violated  the  10- 
point  Nuremberg  Code,  which  in  1947  es- 
tablished the  conditions  for  experiments 
on  human  beings— the  cardinal  point  be- 
ing informed  consent.  Speaking  for  the 
Pentagon,  Dr.  Ronald  R.  Blanck,  a  three- 
star  general  in  the  army's  medical  com- 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


GUCCI 

timepieces 
saks  fifth  avenue 


ln\(\sligalion 


m.iikl  denies  that  an)  ol  i his  look  place 
"Absolutely  not,"  he  says.  "I  will  tell  you 
n. it  out  n  wasn't  done." 

Then.'  are  echoes  of  the  antebellum 
South  in  Pam  Asa's  accent,  in  the  way 
she  cm  stretch  three  syllables  out  of  a 
word  like  "hey."  Her  speech  is  a  genteel 
drawl,  evoking  images  of  hoopskirts,  silk 

fans,    and    magnolia    blossoms.    Asa.    46 

years  old  and  the  mother  o\'  four,  lives  in 
Memphis.  Tennessee.  "American  bj  birth. 
southern  b\  the  grace  of  God,"  she  likes 
to  say,  especially  in  the  presence  of  Yan- 
kees. During  the  Civil  War.  Union  caval- 
rymen arrested  her  great-great-grandfather 
the  Reverend  John  Murray  Robertson  for 
refusing  to  pra\  for  Abraham  Lincoln, 
and  then  turned  his  church,  Huntsville, 
Alabama's  Episcopal  Church  of  the  Nativ- 
ity, into  a  horse  stable.  But  though  Asa  is 
fond  o(  making  jokes  about  "the  War  of 
Northern  Aggression."  she  is  no  regional 
chauvinist.  Members  of  her  family  have 
fought  in  just  about  every  American  con- 
flict, from  the  Revolutionary  War  up 
through  Vietnam.  Francis  Scott  Key,  who 
wrote  the  words  to  the  national  anthem,  i 


cue  ol    hei    ancestors.   Her  lather  retired 

from  the  Marine  Corps  as  a  captain  in 

the  earl)    1960s,  then  worked  as  a  quality- 

control  directoi  i"i  NASA's  Redstone  Arse- 
nal m  Huntsville.  Asa's  reverence  lor  the 
militar)  binders  on  idolatry.  "My  father 
taught  me  ever  since  I  can  remember  to 
have  respect  foi  anyone  who  serves  in  the 
military,  because  they  protect  us.  They're 

willing  to  lake  bullets  lor  US." 

It  was  patriotism  that  motivated  Asa  to 
approach  the  Pentagon  in  1994  about  vac- 
cines administered  It)  the  troops  lor  Opera- 
tion Desert  Storm.  By  then,  the  symptoms 
related  to  Gulf  War  syndrome  had  been 
widel)  publicized.  They  were  vague  enough 
to  point  to  anything  from  a  stroke  to  aller- 
gies to  mere  tension.  "But  when  these  par- 
ticular symptoms  are  taken  together,"  Asa 
says,  "they  point  to  autoimmune  disease" 
when  a  person's  immune  system  goes  hay- 
wire and  attacks  his  or  her  own  body. 

Mostly,  doctors  don't  know  what  causes 
autoimmune  disease.  Many  victims  devel- 
op it  from  unknown  causes.  Since  1984, 
Asa  had  been  working  with  her  husband. 
Kevin— an  M.D.  certified  in  both  internal 
medicine  and  rheumatology— to  treat  a 


group  of  women  with  such  autoimmune 
diseases  as  rheumatoid  arthritis  ami  lupus, 

Allei  a  scnes  ol  landmark  legal  cases  m 
the  early  1990s  which  alleged  a  relation- 
ship between  silicone  breast  implants  and 
autoimmune  disease  (the  lawsuits  put  the 
main  manufacturer.  Dow  Corning,  into 
bankruptcy),  a  large  number  of  the  Asas' 
patients  revealed  that  they  had  received 
breast  implants.  Pam  Asa  became  con- 
vinced that  silicone  had  induced  diseases 
such  as  scleroderma  and  lupus  in  her  pa- 
tients a  conclusion  that  embroiled  her  in 
one  of  the  most  contentious  public-health 
disputes  of  the  90s.  It  is  a  view  that  has 
propelled  her  into  what  promises  to  be  an 
even  more  bellicose  scrap. 

Asa  suspected  that  the  autoimmune 
illnesses  showing  up  in  Gulf  War  troops 
were  also  induced  by  a  toxic  substance. 
For  one  thing,  the  gender  breakdown  of 
the  victims  was  suspicious.  Women  devel- 
op autoimmune  diseases  far  more  often 
than  men  do.  With  lupus  the  ratio  of  fe- 
male to  male  sufferers  can  be  as  great  as 
14  to  1.  But  among  Gulf  War  veterans  the 
victims  were  overwhelmingly  male  (an 
anomaly  only  partially  explained  by  the 


ile  the  words  to  the  national  anthem,  is      medicine  and  rheumatology— to  treat  a      anomaly  only  partially  explained  b; 

"They're  not  going  to  equate  my  son  with  a  lab  rat,"  says  Asa.  "It's  not  right." 


BAD  MEDICINE 
Pamela  Asa  holds  a  jar  of 
squalene,  which  she  suspects 
was  added  to  military 
vaccines  and  is  causing 
autoimmune  diseases. 


fact  that  women  made  up  a  mere  6.8 
percent  of  the  U.S.  force  serving  there). 
Another  startling  fact  pointed  to 
the  vaccination  program.  Many  of 
Asas  Gulf  War-syndrome  patients 
had  never  deployed  to  the  Persian 
Gulf.  They  had  never  been  exposed 
to  petroleum  fires,  chemical-weapons 
fallout,  pesticides,  or  the  other  sus- 
pected causes  of  Gulf  War  syndrome. 
But.  she  says,  they  did  have  one  thing 
in  common  with  the  troops  who  were 
in  theater:  they  had  rolled  up  their 
sleeves  and  gotten  their  shots. 

For  Asa,  all  of  this  pointed  to  an 
adjuvant.  Adjuvants  are  toxic  sub- 
stances which  make  vaccines  more 
effective  by  stimulating  an  even  stron- 
ger response  from  the  immune  sys- 
tem than  a  virus  or  bacterium  might 
on  its  own.  In  the  course  of  investi- 
gating the  possible  connection  be- 
tween her  earlier  patients'  breast  im- 
plants and  their  illnesses,  Asa  says 
she  came  across  a  confidential  Dow 
Corning  document  showing  that  the 
company  had  conducted  research 
with  silicone  as  a  vaccine  adjuvant  in 
1974.  The  term  "adjuvant"  comes  from 
the  Latin  word  adjuvare,  "to  aid."  But 
the  quest  for  a  safe,  effective  adjuvant 
has  been  like  the  medieval  alchemist's 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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Investigation 


quest  in  turn  lead  into  gold,  Adjuvant! 
work  because  they  are  toxic,  generally  too 
toxic  Eighty  years  ol  research  has  pro- 
duced a  grand  total  of  one  that  is  consid- 
ered safe  foi  hum. ui  use:  .1  salt  called  alu- 
minum  hydroxide,  also  known  as  alum 
Other  adjuvants  have  been  rejected  as  too 
dangerous;  in  tests  on  animals,  adjuvants 
have  been  used  over  and  over  again  to  in- 
duce  autoimmune  disease. 

Ai  first,  Asa  suspected  sabotage.  "If  the 
vaccine  manufacturers  were  overseas,  their 
loyalties  could  lie  elsewhere  or  be  bought 
for  the  right  price."  II' an  enemy  wanted  to 
undermine  our  fighting  forces  undetected, 
she  says,  this  would  be  one  way  to  do  it.  "1 
can't  think  of  a  more  effective  and  insidi- 
ous way  to  reduce  the  eflectiveness  of  a 
military  force  going  into  combat.  This  dis- 
ease process  affects  people's  minds.  Pa- 
tients sull'er  mood  swings,  blackouts,  and 
cognitive  disorders  where  a  person  loses 


icals.  I  was  getting  sii  1  enough  where  1 
couldn't  argue  with  anyone.  As  you  no- 
ticed," Smith  recalls  now,  "they  were  talk- 
ing about  chemicals.  [Former]  Benatoi  Don 
Riegle  [Democrat,  Michigan],  Ins  team. 
and  .lay  Rockefeller  [Democrat,  West  Vir- 

ginia]  and  Ins  learn  they  all  said  it  was 
chemicals." 

Watching  the  program,  Asa  noticed  that 
Smith's  knuckle  joints  had  a  particular 
swelling  that  she  had  seen  before.  She  was 
convinced  he  had  an  autoimmune  disease. 

Asa  decided  to  track  down  Colonel 
Smith.  "60  Minutes  called  me  and  said. 
'We  got  people  calling  and  they  wanna 
talk  to  you,"'  says  Smith.  "And  I  said, 
'Fine,  you  know,  doesn't  bother  me,  let 
em  call.'  1  was  getting  people  calling  me 
up  and  saying,  'You've  got  Lyme  disease; 
you've  got  chronic  fatigue  syndrome;  you 
need  to  take  vitamin  C  They  were  trying 
to  help,  but  they  were  nuts.  When  Pam 


believe  the  V.A.,  who  will  you  believe?' 
Ami  ilus  new  doctor  says,  'We'll  believe 
either  N.I.H.  | National  Institutes  of 
Health]  or  Johns  Hopkins.'" 

Sinilli  sent  his  lab  results  to  the  N.I  II. 's 
l)i  John  Klippcl,  who  had  co-edited  a 
standard  medical-school  text  in  this  field 
called  Rheumatology.  "He  reviewed  the 
c.ise,"  says  Smith,  "and  he  said  the  Asas' 
diagnosis  was  correct,  but  he  couldn't  see 
me,  because  he  wasn't  accepting  new  pa- 
tients." (Dr.  Klippel  could  not  be  reached 
for  comment.)  Smith  then  sent  his  records 
to  another  leading  rheumatologist,  Dr. 
Michelle  Petri  of  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity Medical  School.  "She  called  me  up 
and  said  the  Asas'  diagnosis  was  correct, 
but  she's  going  to  have  to  run  her  own 
tests  to  confirm  this.  1  gave  more  blood. 
Did  a  brain  scan.  And  the  results  were 
pretty  much  the  same." 

When  the  Asas  treated  Smith  for  lupus, 


'1  would  have  declined  to  give  the  vaccine.  You  do  not  obey  an  unlawful  order." 


the  ability  to  read  or  understand  language 
or  remember  directions.  This  is  not  what 
you  want  to  see  happening  to  people  who 
handle  guns,  bullets,  and  bombs."  Asa 
contends  this  "process"  can  develop  into 
full-blown,  debilitating,  and  sometimes  fa- 
tal autoimmune  diseases  such  as  lupus, 
rheumatoid  arthritis,  and  multiple  sclerosis. 
In  June  1994,  Asa  phoned  Colonel  John 
Dertzbaugh  of  the  Pentagon's  Defense  Sci- 
ence Board  with  her  theory.  Dertzbaugh 
said  it  made  a  lot  of  sense,  and  promised 
to  check  it  out.  But  the  Science  Board  had 
just  completed  a  report  concluding  that 
there  was  "no  persuasive  evidence"  of  Gulf 
War  syndrome  and  no  single  cause  of  ill- 
ness related  to  service  in  the  Persian  Gulf. 
The  report  had  gone  to  press,  and  no  one 
wanted  to  reopen  the  investigation.  Still, 
Dertzbaugh  couldn't  shake  the  feeling  that 
it  was  important  to  give  Asa's  theory  a  clos- 
er look.  In  December  1994,  he  asked  her  to 
write  a  report  and  submit  it  to  the  Office  of 
the  Army  Surgeon  General.  Dertzbaugh  even 
made  a  personal  pitch;  he  told  the  office 
that  Asa's  theory  appeared  to  explain  the 
patients'  problems,  as  he  understood  them. 
Asa  says  she  asked  the  office  for  vaccine 
samples  to  test  free  of  charge— to  no  avail. 

Herb  Smith  didn't  call  Pam  Asa.  She 
called  him.  In  March  1995,  60  Minutes 
ran  a  segment  on  Gulf  War  syndrome 
that  made  a  case  for  chemical  weapons  as 
its  cause.  Promoting  this  view  was  one  of 
the  veterans  whom  newsman  Ed  Bradley 
interviewed,  Colonel  Herbert  Smith.  "We 
were  getting  hammered  with  a  lot  of  infor- 
mation about  us  getting  affected  by  chem- 


called,  I  thought.  Well,  here's  another  one 
gonna  tell  me,  you  know,  what  I've  got 
and  how  to  fix  it.  And  then  she  starts  talk- 
ing and  it  just  makes  sense  to  me."  About 
one  month  later,  Smith  says,  he  flew  to 
Memphis  to  be  treated  by  the  Asas. 

After  examining  Smith,  Dr.  Kevin  Asa 
agreed  with  his  wife  that  the  diagnosis  was 
systemic  lupus  erythematosus  (S.L.E.). 
Physicians  back  at  Walter  Reed  balked. 
Smith  recalls  them  protesting,  "You  can't 
have  lupus!  You're  a  white  male  in  your 
50s.  People  like  you  don't  get  autoimmune 
diseases!"  They  refused  to  run  their  own 
tests.  Smith  was  not  surprised  at  this  re- 
sponse from  the  people  who  had  been 
telling  him  that  his  problems  were  all  psy- 
chological. "I  had  a  doctor  there,  a  guy 
named  Michael  Roy  [major,  U.S.  Army], 
He  accused  me  of  bleeding  myself  to  fake 
my  anemia,"  says  Smith.  "I  have  a  degree 
in  chemistry  as  well  as  being  a  doctor  of 
veterinary  medicine.  Anyway,  he  says  I'm 
a  pretty  smart  guy,  so  I  must  know  how  to 
screw  up  my  lab  results."  (Dr.  Roy  could 
not  be  reached  for  comment.) 

Smith  wouldn't  let  this  insult  go.  "I 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  commanding  general, 
and  I  told  him  I  had  an  officer,  a  major, 
accuse  a  superior  officer,  me,  of  conduct 
unbecoming  an  officer,  and  perjury.  They 
gave  me  this  new  doctor,  and  he  comes 
in  saying,  'Well,  you  know,  Dr.  Roy  says 
you  got  all  these  psychological  problems.' 
And  I  said,  'What  about  all  the  V.A.  find- 
ings [which  supported  the  conclusion  that 
Smith  was  physically  ill]?'  'The  V.A.? 
They're  wrong.  They  don't  know  what 
they're  doing.'  So  I  asked,  if  you  won't 


his  pain  subsided.  He  could  get  out  of  his 
wheelchair  and  walk  again,  provided  he 
used  canes. 

ord  about  Asa  had  spread  on  the  In- 
ternet's Gulf  War-veteran  grapevine, 
and  others  started  to  get  in  touch 
with  her.  One  was  Dr.  Charles  Jackson,  a 
general  practitioner  who  used  to  work  at 
the  V.A.  hospital  in  Tuskegee,  Alabama. 
Jackson  told  her  he  had  hundreds  of  Gulf 
War-syndrome  patients;  he  didn't  know 
what  it  was  or  how  to  treat  it.  Asa  asked 
him  to  run  standard  diagnostic  tests  for 
autoimmunity.  Jackson  says  the  lab  values 
suggested  that  a  full  quarter  of  his  Gulf 
War  patients  had  autoimmune  problems. 

But  if  Gulf  War  syndrome  is  adjuvant- 
induced  autoimmunity,  what  is  the  adju- 
vant? In  1995,  Asa  got  the  clue  she  sought. 
An  official  with  the  Senate  Committee  on 
Veterans'  Affairs  introduced  her  to  a  pa- 
tient who  had  volunteered  for  an  N.I.H. 
experimental-herpes-vaccine  trial.  The  patient 
complained  of  chronic  fatigue,  muscle  and 
joint  pain,  headaches,  and  photosensitive 
rashes— the  same  baseline  symptoms  as  in 
Gulf  War  syndrome.  She  also  had  arthritis 
and  other  autoimmune  disorders,  diag- 
nosed through  lab  tests.  But  this  particular 
patient  had  never  received  the  herpes  vac- 
cine. She'd  been  injected  with  a  placebo,  a 
single  shot  of  a  compound  called  MF-59, 
which  contained  an  adjuvant  that  is  much 
stronger  than  alum:  squalene.  This  was  in 
1991,  the  same  year  as  Desert  Storm.  Asa 
discovered  from  published  scientific  papers 
that  squalene  was  a  cutting-edge  adjuvant 
used  in  at  least  three  experimental  vaccines 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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Smoke  Contains  Carbon  Monoxide. 


Investigation 


in  the  1990s,  These  were  used  in  tightly 
controlled  experiments  on  animals  and 
humans,  but  vaccines  containing  squa- 
lene  have  nevei  been  approved  by  the 
I'D. A.  lor  human  use, 

Squalene  is  a  lipid,  or  fat,  that  can 
lie  found  in  sebum,  an  oily  sub- 
stance secreted  by  the  human  seba- 
ceous glands.  Commercial  squalene  is 
extracted  from  shark  livers.  You  can 
buy  it  in  health-food  stores  m  capsules 
which  are  purported  to  boost  the  im- 
mune system.  It  is  also  used  in  some 
cosmetics  as  a  moisturizing  oil.  Squa- 
lene manufacturers  say  it's  safe,  and 
it  appears  to  be  when  swallowed  or 
rubbed  on  the  skin.  But  injecting  it  is 
another  matter.  The  adverse  effects  of 
vaccines  containing  squalene  have  been 
documented  in  papers  published  in 
such  peer-reviewed  scientific  journals 
as  Vaccine  and  the  Annals  of  Internal 
Medicine.  Since  the  mid-1970s  research- 
ers studying  autoimmunity  have  used 
squalene  to  induce  rheumatoid  arthri- 
tis and  a  multiple-sclerosis-like  disease 
called  experimental  allergic  encephalo- 
myelitis (E.A.E.)  in  rats.  Like  every 
other  oil-based  adjuvant  ever  concocted, 
squalene  is  apparently  unsafe. 


'Tor  almost  20  years  I  held  a  top-secret  clearance.  Suddenly  I'm  psychotic?"  says  Swan. 


A  rheumatologist  who  conducts  research 
into  adjuvants  at  the  N.I.H.  disputes  the  idea 
that  adjuvants  can  induce  autoimmune  dis- 
ease in  humans.  The  researcher,  who  did 
not  wish  to  be  named,  calls  these  allega- 
tions "junk  science."  He  admits  that  squa- 
lene can  induce  rheumatoid  arthritis,  but  al- 
leges that  it  does  so  only  in  one  species  of 
rat.  Published  scientific  studies,  however, 
show  that  squalene  has  been  linked  to  the 
development  of  autoimmune  disease  in  rats, 
mice,  and  macaque  monkeys.  When  asked 
if  he  thinks  the  F.D.A.  will  ever  approve 
squalene  as  an  adjuvant,  the  N.I.H.  researcher 
says  no.  "The  F.D.A.  has  not  had  a  track 
record  of  approving  oil-based  adjuvants." 

Research  with  squalene  has  been  done 
at  Stockholm's  Karolinska  Institute,  which 
names  the  finalists  for  the  Nobel  Prize  in 
Medicine  each  year.  Dr.  Lars  Klareskog, 
a  rheumatologist  at  the  affiliated  hospital, 
concurs  that  compounds  with  squalene 
could  be  dangerous  for  humans.  "It's  true 
that  adjuvants  can,  in  these  experimental 
models,  turn  a  potential  autoimmune  re- 
action that  is  otherwise  not  pathogenic 
into  pathogenic  immune  reactions.  That 
is  true  in  experimental  animals.  Whether 
that  is  true  in  humans,  we  do  not  really 
know.  But  we  believe  that  is  so.  Where 


the  event  occurs  in  reality  very  much  de- 
pends on  the  genetic  background." 

n  early  1995,  Asa  submitted  to  the  army 
surgeon  general  the  report  Dertzbaugh 
had  asked  her  to  write.  In  response,  the 
Department  of  Defense  in  March  1996  pub- 
lished a  report  on  the  Internet,  refuting  her 
theory  without  ever  putting  it  to  the  test.  A 
letter  to  the  commander  of  the  U.S.  Army 
Medical  Research  and  Materiel  Command 
from  Dr.  Walter  Brandt,  who  works  for  the 
Science  Applications  International  Corpo- 
ration, a  Pentagon  contractor,  summarized 
the  army's  critique  of  Asa's  theory,  claim- 
ing that  the  only  adjuvant  the  military 
used  in  vaccines  was  alum.  He  also  criti- 
cized Asa's  use  of  the  phrase  "human  ad- 
juvant disease"  (H.A.D.),  a  term  used  by 
Japanese  doctors  in  the  1960s  to  describe 
autoimmune  problems  in  women  who  had 
received  silicone  injections  to  enlarge  their 
breasts.  Brandt's  letter  said,  "The  term 
was  coined  30  years  ago  and  is  generally 
not  used  by  most  informed  physicians  to- 
day. . . .  There  is  similarity  between  H.A.D. 
and  Gulf  War  Syndrome  in  their  symptoma- 
tology. However,  the  development  of  symp- 
toms in  H.A.D.  requires  years,  not  months." 
After  the  Internet  report  came  out,  Asa's 


initial  frustration  with  the  army's  lack  of  re- 
sponse turned  to  anger.  "Adjuvant  disease 
doesn't  take  years  to  create  symptoms," 
Asa  says.  "And  I  wrote  them  about  squa- 
lene and  they  hardly  mentioned  a  word 
about  it."  Recently,  Dr.  Brandt  explained 
to  Vanity  Fair,  "The  presence  of  squalene 
or  squalene  antibodies  in  blood  samples 
would  seem  to  be  a  natural  occurrence 
and  not  an  indicator  of  adjuvant  injection." 
According  to  Dr.  Robert  Garry,  a  profes- 
sor of  microbiology  at  Tulane  University 
School  of  Medicine  who  works  with  Asa, 
this  contradicts  the  fundamental  definition 
of  autoimmunity.  "If  that  were  true,  we'd 
have  antibodies  to  all  the  proteins,  all  the 
tissues  in  our  bodies,  and  the  immune  sys- 
tem wouldn't  function  at  all,"  he  says. 

In  August  1997,  Vice  Admiral  Harold 
M .  Koenig,  then  the  surgeon  general  of  the 
navy,  wrote  that  the  army  "has  used  squa- 
lene as  an  adjuvant  in  several  experimental 
vaccines  . . .  over  the  past  ten  years. . . . 
Military  members  who  served  in  the  Per- 
sian Gulf  received  standard  vaccines,  li- 
censed by  the  FDA,  with  one  exception 
[botulinum  toxoid,  which  approximately 

8,000  troops  received] Squalene  was  not 

a  component  of  any  vaccine  product  given." 

In  June  1996,  after  denying  for  years 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


-  -•■•■-   *v    .. 


ImcsliiSilioii 


that  Iraq  had  ever  forward-deployed  chem- 
ical weapons  during  Desert  Storm,  the  De- 
fense Department  admitted  that  the  U.S. 
had  destroyed  a  large  cache  of  chemical 
munitions  at  the  Khamisiyah  depot  in  Iraq 
in  March  1991.  Using  only  limited  data  on 

weather  and  detonation  patterns,  in  1997 
the  D.O.I),  and  CM. A.  released  computer 
models  of  a  toxic  plume  emanating  from 
Khamisiyah,  wafting  downwind  and  pos- 
sibly contaminating  100,000  troops  by 
remarkable  coincidence  the  approximate 
number  of  veterans  who  at  the  lime  were 
believed  to  be  sick.  (In  September  1998, 
after  conducting  its  own  study,  the  Senate 
Committee  on  Veterans'  Affairs  would  cen- 
sure both  the  D.O.D.  and  C.l.A.  for  faulty 
analysis  and  for  sending  letters  to  Gulf  War 
vets  suggesting— without  sufficient  evidence 
-that  Gulf  War  syndrome  may  have  been 
due  to  fallout  from  Khamisiyah.) 

The  Khamisiyah  computer  models  were 
suspect,  but  the  spin  was  effective.  The 
C.I.A.-produced  animations  were  played  and 
replayed  on  television  news  shows.  Almost 
overnight,  chemical-weapons  contamination 
became  the  conventional  wisdom  on  the 


to  the  region.  Yet  according  to  us.  de- 
fense intelligence  documents,  there  .lie  no 
reports  of  Gulf  War  syndrome  among  the 
Kuwaitis  or  Israelis.  The  Egyptians,  who 

contributed  some  40,000  troops  to  the 
coalition  force,  don't  have  it;  neither  do 
the  French  or  the  Belgians.  All  of  them 
sent  troops.  Another  cohort  of  people 
who  do  not  significantly  report  cases  are 
the  journalists  who  covered  the  war,  my- 
self included.  These  groups  all  have  at 
least  one  thing  in  common:  they  did  not 
receive  shots  for  biological-warfare  agents. 
Retired  air  force  master  sergeant  Jeffrey 
Swan,  40,  says  he  got  his  shots  at  Fort 
Belvoir  in  Virginia  sometime  around  March 
1991.  Only  one  of  the  vaccines  he  received 
was  identified  (smallpox),  so  he  doesn't 
know  which  other  shots  he  was  actually 
given.  Because  Swan  speaks  Arabic,  French, 
and  Greek,  the  air  force  sent  him  to  Egypt 
in  April  1991  to  serve  as  a  liaison  with  the 
Egyptian  military.  About  four  months  later 
the  tremors  started,  which  made  him  look 
as  though  he  were  suffering  from  an  alco- 
holic's D.T.'s.  He  developed  joint  and  mus- 
cle pain  and  experienced  seizures  similar 


then  everybody  would  know  that  the  sick- 
ness couldn't  be  due  to  chemical  weapons. 
We're  the  proof."  According  to  Asa's  read 
tag  "|  Swan's  lab  tests.  Swan  has  lupus  I  le 
says  a  V.A.  rheumatologisl  also  told  him 
that  he  may  have  atypical  lupus,  but  that  it 
would  take  more  time  to  confirm  the  diag- 
nosis. Asa  has  tested  Swan  +2  positive  for 
squalene  on  a  scale  of  4. 

n  early  1997,  Asa  bought  200  milliliters 
of  squalene  from  Acros  Organics  in 
Geel,  Belgium.  She  developed  a  scratch 
test  to  measure  sensitivity  to  the  sub- 
stance. All  10  of  her  Gulf  War  patients  were 
"reactive."  Some  suffered  symptoms  such 
as  rashes  or  swelling  at  the  injection  site. 
She  also  tested  a  control  group  of  healthy 
patients  who  had  never  taken  military  vac- 
cines; none  of  them  reacted.  Still,  Asa 
didn't  have  her  evidence.  The  scratch  test 
indicated  exposure,  but  didn't  prove  squa- 
lene had  been  injected. 

Around  this  time,  Asa  teamed  up  with 
Robert  Garry  at  Tulane  University.  Garry 
and  the  university  received  a  U.S.  patent  in 
1997  for  an  assay  that  could  detect  anti- 


"All  I  know  is,  my  son  and  other  people  are  getting  sick  after  getting  the  anthrax  shots." 


cause  of  Gulf  War  syndrome.  Saddam  did 
it,  sort  of.  So  did  the  wind.  And  maybe  army 
engineers  should  have  taken  more  precau- 
tions. As  shots  in  the  dark  go,  this  seemed 
to  make  sense.  The  appearance  that  the 
Pentagon  and  C.l.A.  had  disclosed  a  pos- 
sible cover-up  lent  the  idea  credibility. 

Rut  even  if  a  toxic  plume  had  actually  ex- 
isted and  moved  in  the  direction  the 
Pentagon  said  it  did,  enveloping  100,000 
troops  with  minute  doses  of  nerve  agent,  the 
theory  collapses  on  several  points  with  re- 
gard to  autoimmune  disease.  First,  the  symp- 
toms don't  match:  the  effects  of  chemical 
weapons— acute  headache,  nausea,  shrink- 
age of  the  pupils  to  pinpoints,  and  muscle 
paralysis— are  well  documented.  In  more 
than  50  years  of  data  on  nerve  gases,  pub- 
lished since  the  Nazis  invented  the  chemical 
weapons  sarin  and  soman,  there  isn't  a  sin- 
gle recorded  instance  of  a  nerve  agent  caus- 
ing autoimmune  symptoms  or  diseases. 

Second,  veterans  suffering  from  the 
symptoms  of  Gulf  War  syndrome  who 
never  deployed  to  the  Gulf  could  not  have 
been  exposed  to  chemical-weapons  fallout, 
or  any  other  toxic  agent  in  the  region. 
Some  of  the  veterans  never  left  the  United 
States;  some  went  to  other  countries,  such 
as  Egypt.  These  veterans  did  not  take  RB. 
pills.  Moreover,  had  chemical  weapons 
caused  Gulf  War  syndrome,  one  would  ex- 
pect to  see  it  among  those  who  are  native 


to  Smith's.  In  1996,  back  home  in  Tarn- 
worth,  New  Hampshire,  he  felt  his  car  ac- 
celerating out  of  control  and  he  slammed 
on  the  brakes.  But  it  wasn't  moving;  he 
was  parked  at  a  shopping  center. 

Swan's  symptoms  were  the  same  as  those 
of  veterans  who  had  Gulf  War  syndrome, 
but  a  V.A.  physician  refused  to  put  him  on 
the  government  registry  for  it.  "He  told  me 
that  I  had  Gulf  War  illness,  but  he  couldn't 
write  that  in  the  records,  because  I  hadn't 
been  deployed  there,  I  wasn't  in  the  right 
place.  So  he  wrote  'undiagnosed  illness.'" 
Air-force  physicians  have  listed  Swan's 
problem  as  "Major  Depression  with  psy- 
chotic features."  "For  almost  20  years  I 
held  a  top-secret  security  clearance,"  Swan 
says.  "On  my  medical  chart  there  was  a 
big  red-and-white  sticker  that  said,  'sensi- 
tive duties.'  I  never  had  a  doctor  or  den- 
tist once  note  anything  suspicious  about 
my  behavior.  Any  hint  of  instability  had  to 

be  reported  immediately Anything  that 

might  affect  my  performance  had  to  be  re- 
ported, even  a  teaspoonful  of  codeine.  Sud- 
denly I'm  psychotic?" 

Swan  thinks  he  knows  why  he  and  other 
veterans  have  encountered  this  penchant  to 
call  their  problems  psychosomatic,  if  not 
psychotic.  "Anything  I  said  could  be  dis- 
missed. It  got  to  a  point  where  /  didn't 
even  believe  I  was  having  these  symptoms 
. . .  that  I  was  imagining  everything.  If  we 
were  registered  for  Gulf  War  syndrome, 


bodies  to  polymers,  of  which  squalene  is 
one.  Asa  sent  Garry  an  initial  batch  of 
serum  samples,  including  one  from  the 
subject  who  had  volunteered  for  the  N.I. H. 
herpes-vaccine  trial.  Asa  didn't  tell  Garry 
which  polymer  he  would  be  testing  for,  or 
which  patients  might  have  been  exposed  to 
it.  This  would  be  a  blind  study. 

When  the  samples  all  came  back  posi- 
tive for  antibodies  to  the  unknown  poly- 
mer, Garry  repeated  the  tests  and  got  the 
same  results.  He  also  tested  frozen  serum 
samples  from  Gulf  War  veterans  sent  di- 
rectly to  him  in  1993  by  Department  of 
Defense  and  V.A.  researchers.  He  had 
originally  been  asked  to  test  the  blood  for 
evidence  that  the  patients  had  been  ex- 
posed to  retroviruses  including  H.I.V,  for 
which  they  were  virtually  all  negative. 
Garry  got  these  samples  out  of  cold  stor- 
age and  ran  the  new  assay  on  them.  He 
had  been  told  that  some  of  the  samples 
were  from  healthy  control  subjects;  now 
69  percent  of  the  samples  tested  positive 
for  antibodies  to  the  unknown  polymer. 

It  was  at  about  this  time,  Asa  says,  that 
the  phone  calls  started.  She  would  an- 
swer the  phone,  and  no  one  answered  back. 
Her  phone  would  occasionally  dial  911  by 
itself  in  the  middle  of  the  night.  A  year 
and  a  half  earlier,  just  after  she  had  sub- 
mitted her  report  to  the  D.O.D. ,  there  had 
been  two  attempted  break-ins  at  her  house. 
Her  husband  opposed  any  further  involve- 


VANITY     FAIR 


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convened  the  lirst  meeting  of  the  task 
lorcc,  which  began  to  draft  plans  to 
"surge"  the  production  of  vaccines  for 
anthrax  and  Botulinum  toxin.  At  the 
next  meeting,  on  October  12,  the  act- 
ing chairperson,  Colonel  (iarland  Mc- 
Carly,  and  a  team  of  13  other  officers 
decided  to  give  the  task  force  and  its 
mission  the  code  name  Project  Badger. 
Of  more  than  160  companies  that 
were  asked  to  make  anthrax  vaccine, 
all  but  one  said  no.  Only  Ixderle-Praxis 
Biologicals  of  Pearl  River,  New  York, 
signed  on.  Under  the  supervision  of 
General  Ronald  R.  Blanck  and  Colo- 
nel Harry  Dangerfield,  Project  Badger 
organized  the  production  of  additional 
anthrax  vaccine  at  the  National  Cancer 
Institute's  Frederick  Cancer  Research 
and  Development  Center,  located  at 
Fort  Detrick.  Both  Lederle  and  N.C.I. 
were  unlicensed  and  unregulated  by 
the  F.D.A.  The  plan  called  for  subcon- 
tractors to  ship  vaccine  to  the  only 
FD.A.-licensed  manufacturer  of  an- 
thrax vaccine,  Michigan  Biologic  Prod- 
ucts Institute  (now  BioPort),  in  Lan- 
sing, Michigan,  for  bottling,  labeling, 
potency  testing,  and  storage.  This  would 
have  been  another  breach  of  federal 
safety  regulations.  As  an  earlier  task 
force  memo  from  October  10  stated. 


"Our  commander  told  us  to  destroy  everything  connected  with  the  vaccine,"  says  Dr.  Dubay. 


ment  with  the  Gulf  War-syndrome  pa- 
tients after  the  harassment  began.  If  it  was 
tied  to  this  work,  their  children  could  be 
in  danger,  he  believed.  But  Asa  persisted, 
partly,  she  says,  for  the  safety  of  her  chil- 
dren. Her  eldest,  Chris,  was  in  high  school 
and  would  soon  register  for  the  draft. 
"They're  not  going  to  equate  my  son  with 
a  lab  rat.  I  don't  care  what  the  vaccine  is. 
I  don't  care  what  they  claim  it's  supposed 
to  do  for  mankind.  It's  not  right  to  experi- 
ment on  people,  ever." 

Asa  sent  Garry  more  samples,  and  by 
the  fall  of  1997,  Garry  had  the  results. 
Ninety-five  percent  of  Asa's  Gulf  War- 
syndrome  patients  had  tested  positive  for 
antibodies  to  the  unknown  polymer.  Col- 
onel Smith  was  positive.  The  subject  from 
the  N.I.H.  vaccine  trial  was  positive.  Of 
those  sick  veterans  who  had  never  de- 
ployed to  the  Gulf,  but  who  said  they  had 
received  shots,  100  percent  were  positive. 

In  all,  Asa  and  Garry  tested  some  350 
subjects,  half  of  them  controls.  "So  what 
was  that  stuff?"  he  asked  Asa. 

"Squalene,"  she  said. 

This  left  one  major  question  unanswered. 
If  the  military  used  a  squalene  adjuvant, 
in  which  vaccine  did  they  use  it? 


n  August  1990,  the  month  Iraqi  troops 
invaded  Kuwait,  there  was  palpable  anx- 
iety at  the  Pentagon  over  the  prospect  that 
Saddam  Hussein  might  use  biological  weap- 
ons to  defend  his  newly  annexed  territory. 
On  August  8,  intelligence  intercepts  of  Iraqi 
military  communications  indicated  that 
Baghdad  had  produced  and  probably  weap- 
onized  (i.e.,  made  suitable  for  warfare)  many 
deadly  biological  agents,  including  botu- 
linum  toxin  and  anthrax.  The  U.S.  Army 
had  been  purchasing  small  amounts  of  vac- 
cine for  both,  but  its  stocks  were  woefully 
short  of  what  would  actually  be  needed. 
A  high-ranking  army  source  confirms  that 
by  August  1990  the  United  States  had 
stockpiled  between  11,000  and  12,000  doses 
of  anthrax  vaccine.  We  eventually  deployed 
697,000  troops  in  the  Persian  Gulf. 

According  to  declassified  military  docu- 
ments, in  August  1990  the  army  surgeon 
general  at  the  time,  General  Frank  F  Led- 
ford  Jr.,  ordered  a  team  of  doctors  and  re- 
searchers from  the  army,  the  navy,  and  the 
air  force  to  form  a  secret  Tri-Service  Task 
Force  on  vaccinations  for  troops  in  the 
Gulf.  On  October  9,  1990,  in  a  conference 
room  at  the  army's  Fort  Detrick  in  Freder- 
ick, Maryland,  the  Defense  Department 


"It  must  be  noted  that  any  firm  other  than 
Michigan  will  produce  a  vaccine  under  an 
I.N.D.  and  not  a  licensed  product."  I.N.D. 
stands  for  "investigational  new  drug,"  which 
requires  special  approval  from  the  F.D.A. 
for  use.  The  army— as  the  executive  agent  for 
the  Defense  Department's  biological-warfare 
vaccine  program— should  have  sought  that 
approval.  It  did  not,  and  N.C.I,  confirms 
that  it  never  applied  for  an  I.N.D.  to  pro- 
duce anthrax  vaccine.  (Wyeth-Ayerst  Inter- 
national, which  now  owns  Lederle-Praxis, 
could  not  be  reached  for  comment.)  The 
F.D.A.  must  approve  all  vaccines  used  in 
the  United  States  and  also  license  the  pro- 
duction sites,  military  vaccines  not  excepted. 
General  Blanck  disputes  this  scenario  un- 
equivocally. "I  have  no  knowledge  of  any- 
body producing  any  anthrax  vaccine  other 
than  Michigan,"  he  says.  "Nobody  provided 
us  or  produced  any  vaccine,  because  the 
war  ended,  basically,  is  what  happened." 

By  the  first  week  of  December  1990, 
Project  Badger  had  begun  plans  to  test 
other  experimental  vaccines  on  U.S. 
troops  in  the  Gulf.  Project  scientists  re- 
ferred to  this  endeavor,  rather  portentously, 
as  a  "Manhattan-like  project,"  or  simply 


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Investigation 


a  "Manhattan  Project."  They  organized  a 
crash  program  to  manufacture,  01  pur- 
chase, at  least  four  experimental  vaccines: 

Enterotoxigenic  I..  C'oli,  Hepatitis  A.  C'en- 
toxin,  and  Shigella.  At  least  two  Othei  ex- 
perimental products  were  ultimately  used: 
P.B.  pills  and  botulmum  toxoid  vaccine, 
for  both  of  which  the  army  received  from 
the  F.D.A.  a  waiver  of  informed  consent. 
As  for  the  mysterious  "Vaccine  A,"  var- 
iously cited  as  Vac  A,  Vac  A-l,  or  Vac  A-2 
in  the  shot  records  of  sick  veterans  such 
as  Colonel  Smith,  declassified  Defense 
Department  documents  identify  it  as  an- 
thrax vaccine.  Dr.  Gregory  Dubay,  who 
commanded  the  129th  Medical  Company, 
a  former  Alabama  National  Guard  unit 
out  of  Mobile,  gave  thousands  of  anthrax 
vaccinations  to  troops.  He  says,  "Each 
soldier  had  to  read  a  classified  sheet  of  in- 
structions, stating  that  he,  or  she,  was  re- 
ceiving a  secret  shot,  and  that  this  was  so 
for  reasons  of  operational  security.  You 
don't  want  to  tell  the  enemy  that  you're 
getting  protection  against  one  of  his  weap- 
ons." Dubay— who  both  administered  and 
took  the  vaccinations— says  that  he  was  un- 
der orders  not  to  record  the  inoculations 
in  the  soldiers'  medical  records,  and  that 
the  troops  were  not  given  a  chance  to  de- 


even  more  compelling  reason  to  enhance 
the  vaccine.  Two  Formei  members  ol  Proj- 
ect Badger  say  the  coalition  suspected 
that  Iraq  had  engineered  a  more  powerful 
anthrax  bio-weapon,  "We  were  concerned 
that  Saddam  may  have  made  anthrax 
resistant  to  penicillin,"  says  one,  who 
does  inn  wish  to  be  identified.  "We  knew 
he  had  the  skills  to  do  that  people  who 
had  trained  in  the  United  States,  who  had 
the  skills  to  turn  the  bug  into  a  resistant 
bug. . . .  The  Brits  were  the  ones  who  gave 
us  the  information,  actually.  We  actually 
knew  who  those  people  were."  The  an- 
thrax vaccine  licensed  by  the  F.D.A.  back 
in  1970  was  designed  to  protect  against 
anthrax  germs  that  occasionally  infect 
woolsorters  and  veterinarians.  It  was  not 
known  to  be  effective  against  a  biowarfare 
agent  that  Iraq  had  possibly  made  more 
lethal.  It  is  plausible  that  the  army 
thought  an  experimental  anthrax  vaccine 
was  worth  the  risk,  especially  since  squa- 
lene  was  considered  to  be  a  superior  ad- 
juvant. However,  this  was  a  hypothesis. 
Administering  such  a  vaccine  to  the 
troops  would  have  been  tantamount  to  a 
human  experiment.  In  order  to  conduct  a 
legal  trial  with  squalene,  one  would  have 
to  file  an  "investigational  new  drug"  ap- 


labs  at  Fort  Detrick,  Contracts  were  drawn 
up  l<n  fiscal  years  1992  and  1991  In  a  se- 
cret Pentagon  log  kept  continuously  be- 
tween August  8,  1990.  and  I  cbruary  7, 
1992,  there  are  numerous  references  to  the 
army's  expanded  vaccine-production  pro- 
gram, but  no  record  of  any  decision  to 
halt  it  or  to  cancel  the  contract  with  P.R.I. 
(  Inick  Dasey,  a  spokesman  at  Fort  Detrick, 
says  that  no  anthrax  vaccine  was  ever  pro- 
duced through  the  contract. 

Presumably,  the  vaccines  made  during 
the  Gulf  War  are  part  of  the  stockpile 
now  being  administered  in  the  wake 
of  the  D.O.D.'s  December  1997  decision 
to  immunize  all  2.4  million  people  in  the 
armed  services  against  anthrax.  When  Pen- 
tagon officials  held  a  press  conference 
about  the  mandatory  immunizations  last 
summer,  they  insisted  that  there  had  been 
only  seven  reported  adverse  reactions  to 
the  nearly  140,000  anthrax  vaccinations 
that  the  military  had  given  in  the  preced- 
ing six  months.  But  according  to  the 
F.D.A.'s  Vaccine  Adverse  Event  Reporting 
System,  there  were  at  least  64  reports  of 
reactions  to  the  vaccine  between  Septem- 
ber 2,  1998,  and  March  9,  1999.  Activist 
Lori  Greenleaf,  a  day-care  provider  in 


"No  one  in  their  right  mind  would  volunteer  for  something  like  that/'  says  Jeff  Rawls. 


cline  the  shots.  "You  were  just  marched 
through,  and  that  was  it. . . .  Then  our 
commander  told  us  to  destroy  everything 
connected  with  it— the  empty  vials,  the 
boxes,  and  the  package  inserts.  We  burned 
them  all  in  55-gallon  steel  drums  back  be- 
hind the  tents." 

The  Pentagon  says  that  150,000  Gulf 
War  troops  received  anthrax  inoculations. 
There  are  no  documents  available  proving 
that  the  army  used  a  squalene  adjuvant  in 
the  unapproved  vaccines,  and  the  army 
has  specifically  denied  it.  But  that  still 
leaves  Asa  and  Garry  with  more  than  100 
sick  veterans  who  had  their  shots  and  now 
test  positive  for  antibodies  to  squalene. 

hy  might  the  army  have  used  squa- 
lene instead  of  alum,  the  only  adju- 
vant approved  for  human  use?  Prob- 
ably because  squalene  was  stronger.  The 
licensed  anthrax  vaccine  was  relatively 
weak.  Immunity  wasn't  achieved  with  one 
shot.  It  took  six  shots,  administered  over 
a  period  of  18  months,  then  an  annual 
booster.  In  1991,  tens  of  thousands  of 
U.S.  troops  arrived  in  Saudi  Arabia  only 
a  month  before  the  coalition  forces  began 
the  ground  war.  Most  could  get  only  two 
shots  out  of  the  six-shot  regime;  some 
just  got  one.  And  there  was,  perhaps,  an 


plication  with  the  F.D.A.  and  have  that 
application  approved.  This  did  not  hap- 
pen. In  October  1997,  the  British  revealed 
their  attempts  to  boost  the  efficacy  of 
their  anthrax  vaccine  during  the  Gulf 
War  by  using  a  pertussis  vaccine  as  an 
adjuvant.  This  controversial  combination 
had  caused  serious  side  effects  in  ani- 
mals. But  Asa  believes  she  has  evidence 
that  the  British  also  boosted  at  least  one 
of  their  vaccines  with  squalene.  In  1998, 
she  tested  five  British  veterans  suffering 
from  symptoms  similar  to  those  of  Gulf 
War  syndrome.  Four  were  positive  for 
antibodies  to  squalene.  (The  British  Min- 
istry of  Defence  denies  using  squalene  in 
vaccines  given  to  Gulf  War  troops.) 

Among  the  1991  coalition  allies,  the 
United  States,  Britain,  Canada,  and  the 
Czech  Republic  have  reported  possible 
Gulf  War-related  illnesses.  Of  these,  the 
first  three  admit  to  immunizing  troops 
against  biological-warfare  agents. 

Production  of  anthrax  vaccine  in  un- 
licensed facilities  did  not  end  with  the 
war.  On  August  29,  1991,  six  months  after 
Iraq's  surrender,  the  army  surgeon  general 
approved  a  $15.4  million  contract  for  a 
company  called  Program  Resources,  Inc. 
(PR. I.),  a  National  Cancer  Institute  sub- 
contractor that  managed  some  of  N.C.I.'s 


Morrison,  Colorado,  says  that,  based  on 
her  E-mail,  there  are  a  lot  more  military 
personnel  reporting  problems.  Greenleaf 
began  a  grassroots  campaign  against  man- 
datory anthrax  immunizations  because 
of  her  23-year-old  son,  Erik  Julius,  who 
she  says  fell  ill  after  taking  the  second  of 
three  anthrax  shots  in  March  1998.  She  is 
swamped  with  messages  from  fearful  en- 
listed men  and  women.  Some  of  them 
have  already  received  their  anthrax  shots. 
"They've  got  rashes,  chronic  fatigue,  hair 
loss,  memory  loss,  muscle  and  joint  pain, 
numbness  in  their  extremities."  Greenleaf 
says  she  does  not  know  what  an  adjuvant 
is,  and  she  has  no  idea  what  is  ailing  her 
son.  "All  I  know  is,  my  son  and  many 
other  people  are  getting  sick  after  getting 
the  anthrax  shots,  and  it  sounds  an  awful 
lot  like  Gulf  War  syndrome." 

Two  servicemen  who  received  their  an- 
thrax shots  last  year  have  tested  positive 
for  antibodies  to  squalene.  One  received 
vaccine  from  Lot  No.  FAV020,  the  same 
lot  sold  to  Canada  and  Australia.  The  oth- 
er serviceman  received  vaccine  from  Lot 
No.  FAV030.  Doses  from  this  lot  were 
also  sold  to  Canada,  according  to  that 
country's  Department  of  National  De- 
fence. There  is  no  evidence  that  every 
dose  in  FAV020  and  FAV030  is  conlami- 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     1999 


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nated  with  squalene,  but  the  antibodies  in 
these  two  veterans  suggest  that  anyone  im- 
munized from  these  lots  may  be  playing 
"vaccine  roulette."  The  U.S.  has  shipped 
anthrax  vaccine  from  other  lots  to  Ger- 
many, Israel,  and  Taiwan, 

If  the  first  casualty  of  war  is  truth,  then  the 
rule  of  law  is  a  close  second.  As  Cicero 
wrote,  "Laws  are  silent  in  time  of  war."  In 
the  fall  of  1990,  the  Pentagon  began  petition- 
ing the  F.D.A.  to  waive  informed-consent 
requirements  on  so-called  investigational 
new  drugs  lor  the  Persian  Gulf.  This  was 
an  ethical  powder  keg.  In  1947,  under  the 
authority  of  the  U.S.  military  in  Nurem- 
berg, Nazi  scientists  and  physicians  stood 
accused  of  war  crimes  and  crimes  against 
humanity  for  performing  experiments  on 
prisoners.  Seven  were  hanged.  Following 
the  trials,  U.S.  judges  drafted  the  10-point 
Nuremberg  Code,  which  was  intended  to 
govern  all  future  experiments  involving 
human  subjects.  The  code's  first  and  best- 
known  principle  was  voluntary,  informed 
consent.  Until  the  Gulf  War,  the  U.S.  mili- 
tary had  never  argued  that  there  should  be 
any  exceptions.  In  the  end,  the  F.D.A.  de- 


cided lo  grant  waivers  lor  P.B.  pills  and  lor 
the  rarelj  used  and  as  Vet  unlicensed  vat 

cine  botulinum  toxoid 

In  1994,  the  Senate  Veterans'  Allans 
Committee  called  this  a  violation  of 
Nuremberg,  the  moral  equivalent  of  the 
army's  World  War  II  era  mustard-gas  tests 
on  troops  and  its  LSD  experiments  in  the- 
sis and  60s.  "We'd  like  to  think  these 
kinds  of  abuses  are  a  thing  of  the  past,  but 
the  legacy  continues,"  said  the  committee 
chairman  at  the  time,  Senator  Rockefeller. 
"During  the  Persian  Gulf  War,  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  soldiers  were  given  experi- 
mental vaccines  and  drugs  . . .  these  med- 
ical products  could  be  causing  many  of 
the  mysterious  illnesses  those  veterans  are 
now  experiencing."  Rockefeller  could  bare- 
ly contain  himself:  "The  D.O.D.'s  failure 
to  provide  medical  treatment  or  informa- 
tion to  soldiers  was  unjustifiable,  unethi- 
cal, sometimes  illegal,  and  caused  unnec- 
essary suffering." 

He  was  referring  to  the  experimental  P.B. 
pills  and  botulinum-toxoid  vaccine.  Rocke- 
feller and  his  staff  made  no  mention  of  un- 
approved anthrax  vaccine,  Project  Badger, 
or  the  Persian  Gulf  "Manhattan  Project." 


Declassified  documents  show  that  Dr. 
Waller  Brandt,  who  helped  organize  the  In- 
ternet report  attacking  Asa's  theories,  was 
one  of  the  original  members  of  Project  Bad- 
ger. Dr.  Michael  Roy,  the  physician  who  di- 
agnosed (  olonel  Smith's  illness  as  psychoso- 
matic, also  worked  with  members  of  the 
team  in  early  1991  the  same  doctors  who 
planned  the  "Manhattan  Project."  The  Pen- 
tagon says  that  most  of  the  unit  logs  in 
which  biological-warfare  vaccinations  were 
recorded  are  missing.  Vanity  Fair  has  found 
an  army  document  showing  that  at  least 
some  of  these  records  were  ordered  sent  to 
the  Office  of  the  Surgeon  General.  General 
Ronald  Blanck,  who  led  the  Project  Badger 
Working  Group  on  expanded  vaccine  pro- 
duction, is  the  current  army  surgeon  general. 

Some  might  understand  the  decision  to 
accelerate  vaccine  production  by  any 
means  possible  when  faced  with  the 
prospect  of  biological  warfare.  But  Dr. 
Greg  Dubay  believes  he  should  have  been 
told  if  he  was  administering  an  altered  ver- 
sion of  an  existing  vaccine.  "If  I'd  known 
it  was  a  vaccine  that  had  been  tampered 
with— if  it   was  tampered  with— I  would 


Production  of  anthrax  vaccine  in  unlicensed  facilities  did  not  end  with  the  Gulf  War. 


have  declined  the  order  to  give  it,"  he 
says.  "You  do  not  obey  an  unlawful 
order.  If  I  knew  it  was  done  clandes- 
tinely, and  had  solid  evidence,  I  would 
have  disobeyed  the  order.  The  first 
oath  of  every  physician  is  to  do  no 
harm.  I  don't  know  any  physician 
who  would  purposely  do  something 
that  is  truly  harmful,  unless  you're  a 
Mengele  or  something." 

A  spokesman  for  BioPort  says 
parts  of  Project  Badger  remain  classi- 
fied. Pentagon  officials  deny  using  a 
squalene  adjuvant  in  any  Gulf  War 
vaccines  and  balk  at  Asa's  allegation 
that  some  undiagnosed  Gulf  War  ill- 
nesses are  autoimmune  diseases.  Can 
a  substance  that  induces  autoimmune 
disease  in  a  rat  or  a  mouse  be  danger- 
ous to  a  human  being?  Former  Marine 
Corps  tank  commander  Jeff  Rawls 
has  a  solution  for  the  naysayers.  Rawls 
is  a  31-year-old  Gulf  War  veteran  who 
now  lives  with  his  parents  in  upstate 
New  York.  He  has  experienced  severe 
shrinkage  of  part  of  his  brain  and  can 
barely  walk.  At  +3,  he  is  almost  off 
the  scale  for  antibodies  to  squalene. 
"Inject  them  with  the  same  thing  and 
see  what  happens,"  Rawls  says  in  a 
slurred  and  halting  voice.  "No  one  in 
their  right  mind  would  volunteer  for 
something  like  that."  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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GENEVE 


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Water  resistant 
Expansion  clasp 


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Everybody  has  a  gift  to  give. 


You  remember  that  feeling'/ 
The  first  time  you  threw  the  ball  up  at  the  rim, 

in  a  real  game? 
Or  kicked  the  ball  toward  the  goal? 
And  you  scored. 


wone  helped  you  with  that. 


f 


ids  need  coaches. 


Kids  need  you. 


Because  you  know  the  feeling. 


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la  1 1  ol  hu 


VAN  IT  Y    FAIR     N  O  M  I  N  AT 

Roberta 
Guaspari-Tzavari 


w  n  »  ** 


violm  teacher 
turned  crusader  Roberta 


er  daughter,  Sophia,  eight, 
photographed  in  the 
stairwell  of  her  East  Harlem 


iovember  II.  1998. 


ecause  19  years  ago,  as  a  single  mother,  she 
packed  her  bags  (including  50  violins),  moved  to  East  Harlem 
with  her  two  young  boys,  and  began  to  teach  inner-city  chil- 
dren about  the  magic  that  happens  when  a  bow  meets  strings. 
because  her  lessons  soon  became  so  popular  that  students 
(roughly  1,200  alumni  to  date)  were  chosen  by  lottery,  as  parents 
were  won  over  by  one  of  her  strongest  themes:  When  taking  up 
the  violin,  kids  tend  to  turn  away  from  violence,  because  after 
her  public  funding  was  cut  in  1991,  "the  violin  lady"  managed  to 
rally  virtuosos  Itzhak  Perlman,  Isaac  Stern,  and  Arnold  Stein- 
hardt  to  help  rescue  her  classes,  organizing  concerts  that  have 
since  propelled  her  Harlem  charges  to  Carnegie  Hall,  the  White 


House,  and  Zurich,  Switzerland,  because  her  program,  Opus 
118  (named  for  the  block  where  she  lives),  still  struggles,  despite 
private  donations  and  new  backing  from  the  New  York  City 
Board  of  Education,  because  this  bighearted  disciplinarian  in- 
sists, "I'm  not  giving  up  on  these  kids.  Music  deserves  a  place 
in  their  souls."  because  her  adopted  eight-year-old  daughter,  El 
Salvador-born  Sophia,  is  now  one  of  her  pupils,  because  her  re- 
silience has  attracted  supporters  such  as  Dave  Grusin,  Quincy 
Jones,  Madonna,  Rod  Stewart,  and,  most  recently,  Meryl 
Streep,  who  plays  Guaspari-Tzavaras  in  Wes  Craven's  biographi- 
cal film,  Fifty  Violins,  premiering  in  July,  because,  fiddle  in 
hand,  she  perseveres  con  brio.  —Katharine  marx 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH    by     ANDERS     OVERGAARD 


MAY     1  9  9  9 


f        ^§ 

^f^L 

j 

W  fl 

New  Nivea  Visage  Q10  Wrinkle  Control 

is  a  genuine  breakthrough.  Coenzyme  Q10  occurs 
naturally  in  your  skin  and  helps  defend  against 
aging.  But  your  level  of  Q10  drops  as  you  get  older. 
Now  it  can  be  restored  and  the  look  of  wrinkles 
reduced  like  never  before.  In  fact,  we  guarantee 
your  complete  satisfaction  or  your  money  back. 


The  secret  to  reducing 
rinkles  was  in  your  face. 


Now  it's  in  this  jar. 


'NE\N 


skin's  own 

Coenzyme  Q10 


a 


NIVEA 

VISAGE 


10 


Wri 


NKLE 


Cor* 


10- 


N IV  E  A 

VISAGE 


UVEA    brings    your    face    to    life". 


'I        UJ  I 


DICK  SNYDER'S  TARNISHE 


he  built  it  into  America  s  largest  publisher,  and  made  plenty  of 
emies.  Now,  with  Snyder's  new  empire,  Golden  Books,  dee})  in  debt, 


1     1 

BY  MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON 


it  II 


f/?: 


s 


CtfLjgfW1, 


®iKKS 


r*M 


G*^S^ 


is  weekend  house  looks  the 
same  as  when  he  bought  it 
21  years  ago,  in  the  midst  of 
his  reign  at  the  pinnacle  of 
New  York  publishing.  A  13-room  Normandy- 
style  chateau  with  steep  slate  roofs  and 
mullioned  windows,  Linden  Farm  surveys 
rolling  acres  to  the  wooded  Ward  Pound 
Ridge  Reservation  beyond:  Westchester  as 


£Sft 


western  France.  The  grounds,  though, 
have  changed.  Restless  at  home  as  at 
work,  Richard  Snyder  feels  compelled 
to  keep  improving  them.  "See  those 
rows?"  he  says,  indicating  scores  of 
what  look  like  tiny  planted  sticks  across 
the  front  lawn.  "Chestnut  and  walnut 
trees."  They'll  take  decades  to  grow  to 
maturity,  but  that  hardly  diminishes  Sny- 
der's pride  at  having  planted  them.  "Be- 
sides," he  says,  disarmingly  candid,  "you 
know  what  full-size  ones  cost?" 

Snyder,  66  years  old,  tramps  over  to 
new  gardens  that  he  and  his  wife,  Laura, 
35  years  old,  planted  for  each  other,  bleak 
in  midwinter  but  still  impressively  large. 
He  points  out  the  private  playground  for 


Dick  Snyder  p 
library  of  his  Upper 
Manhattan  town  house,  March  11, 
1999.  Insets:  All  the  President's 
Men,  published  in  1974  by  Snyder 
at  Simon  &  Schuster;  Golden 
Books'  The  Poky  Little  Puppy. 


their  two  young  boys,  Elliott,  five,  and 
Coleman,  two,  and  the  fields  Snyder  has 
cleared  amid  Linden  Farm's  82  acres.  But 
his  greatest  pride  is  reserved  for  the  ponds. 
Three  tiered,  bass-stocked  ponds,  connect- 
ed by  trickling  waterways.  To  see  them  is 
to  gain  a  first  inkling  of  why  Snyder  is  in 
the  fix  he's  in  today. 

In  June  1994,  Snyder  was  chairman  of 
Simon  &  Schuster,  America's  largest  pub- 
lisher, which  he'd  built  up  from  modest 
origins  during  his  long  tenure  of  brilliant 
book  marketing,  prescient  acquisitions, 
and  harsh,  often  abusive  management.  One 
day  that  June  he  was  the  king,  admired 
and  feared,  planning  to  preside  for  many 
more  years.  The  next  day  he  was  out,  de- 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     GASPER      TRINGAtE 


MAY      19  9  9 


IF  YOU  WANT  TO  SEE  SOMETHING 
done,  just  tell  some  human  beings 
it  can't  be  done*  Make  it  known  that 
it's  impossible  to  fly  to  the  moon, 
or  run  a  hundred  metres  in  nine- 
point-nine  seconds,  or  solve  Fermat's 
Last  Theorem.  Remind  the  world  that 
no  one  has  ever  hit  sixty-two  home 
runs  in  a  season.  Stuffed  eighteen 
people  into  a  Volkswagen  Bug.  Set 
half  the  world  free.  Or  cloned  a  sheep. 
Dangle  the  undoable  in  front  of 
the  world.  Then,  consider  it  done 


HUMAN  ACHIEVEMENT 


Merrill  Lynch 


Ml  COM 


Publishing 


posed,  fired  bj  Simon  &  Schuster's  new 
owner,  Sumner  Redstone  of  Viacom,  and 
forced  into  exile  here  at  Linden  Farm.  That 

was  when  he  Started  in  on  the  ponds:  mov- 
ing earth,  hauling  rocks,  channeling  his  bit- 
terness and  rage  and  sorrow  into  back- 
breaking  manual  labor,  month  after  month. 

Bui  thinking  all  the  time:  What  next'.' 

["here  had  to  be  a  comeback  to  work, 
to  win  again,  to  show  his  corporate  as- 
sassins how  wrong  they'd  been. 
The  answer  that  loomed,  pecu- 
liarly enough,  was  Golden  Books, 
known  for  the  little  goklen-spined 
classics  that  since  1942  have 
been  found  on  the  bookshelves 
of  nearly  every  child  in  America. 
Scully  the  TUgboat,  Barbie  color- 
ing books,  and  Mickey  Mouse 
stories  might  seem  a  comedown 
from  best-sellers  by  Larry  Mc- 
Murtry,  Bob  Woodward,  and  Da- 
vid McCullough.  but  Golden  was 
a  brand  and,  after  years  of  lack- 
adaisical stewardship,  a  bargain. 
Or  so  it  seemed. 

The  ensuing  drama  has 
left  Wall  Street  analysts 
as  confused  as  Snyder's 
former  colleagues  and  the 
friends  he  persuaded  to  invest  in  Golden. 
Somehow,  in  the  three  years  since  he  and 
his  backers  bought  a  controlling  interest 
in  it,  Snyder  has  managed,  as  its  chair- 
man and  C.E.O.,  to  bring  a  $400  million 
company  to  the  brink  of  bankruptcy.  At 
the  start  of  1998,  Golden's  stock  was  trad- 
ing at  about  $12  a  share  on  the  nasdaq 
exchange.  Within  six  months,  it  was 
down  to  25  cents  a  share.  That's  hard  to 
do.  Though  the  stock  has  perked  up  a 
bit  on  takeover  rumors,  the  news  from 
Golden  has  gone  from  bad  to  worse:  de- 
faults on  bond  payments,  angry  creditors 
threatening  Chapter  11,  and  desperate  ef- 
forts to  recapitalize  the  company's  stag- 
gering debt. 

This  month,  by  coincidence,  Snyder's 
glory  days  at  Simon  &  Schuster  will  be 
limned  in  a  memoir  by  his  old  friend  Mi- 
chael Korda,  who  as  the  house's  editor 
in  chief  since  1968  was  Snyder's  partner 
in  its  extraordinary  growth.  In  the  just- 
published  Another  Life,  a  beguiling  sequel 
of  sorts  to  his  classic  1979  Charmed  Lives, 
Korda  fondly  depicts  Snyder's  fierce  am- 
bition and  keen  marketing  instincts.  Later 
this  fall  comes  Isn't  She  Great,  a  Universal 
feature  based  on  a  chapter  of  the  new 
book.  It  is  about  Korda's  secret  and  suc- 
cessful effort,  at  Snyder's  behest,  to  lure 
Valley  of  the  Dolls  author  Jacqueline  Su- 
sann  from  Random  House  in  the  1960s, 
and  stars  Bette  Midler  as  Susann  with 
Snyder  portrayed— satirically,  perhaps?— 


by  ex  Monty  Python  troupei  Fohn  Geese. 

Bui  Snyder's  current  predicament  is  what 
fascinates  the  publishing  world.  How  could 
this  lough,  successful  businessman  the 
king!  create  such  a  spectacular  mess?  Is 
much  of  it,  perhaps,  not  his  fault7  And 
can  lie,  having  tumbled  from  the  moun- 
taintop  into  this  mire,  dig  his  way  out  be- 
fore he  suffocates? 

Snyder  has  his  defenders.  "He's  a  ge- 


ALL  THAT  GLITTERS 

Top,  M.  Lincoln  Schuster  and  Richard  Simon 

in  1924,  when  they  started  Simon  & 

Schuster  as  a  Jewish  house  in  a  Wasp 

industry;  above,  Richard  Snyder  poses  with 

some  of  S&S's  big  books,  1984. 


nius,  one  of  the  great  publishers  of  the 
20th  century,"  declares  Penguin  Putnam 
Inc.'s  president,  Phyllis  Grann,  who,  as 
Snyder's  "mystery  editor"  in  the  1970s, 
persuaded  him  to  pay  $3,000  for  a  first 
novel,  Where  Are  the  Children?,  by  a 
struggling  widow  named  Mary  Higgins 
Clark.  "And  it  would  be  sad  for  Vanity 
Fair  to  concentrate  on  Golden  Books," 
Grann  continues.  Says  Tony  Schulte,  for- 


mer executive  vice  president  of  Random 
House.  "There  wasn't  another  publisher 
his  equal  in  terms  of  building  a  company 
from  the  modest,  privately  owned  entity 
that  Simon  &  Schuster  had  been  into  the 
huge,  diversified  public  company  it  be- 
came." Yet  the  list  of  those  who  still  per- 
ceive him  as  the  meanest,  scariest  man 
in  the  book  world  is  rather  lengthier,  and 
so  the  curiosity  is  mixed  with  a  palpable 
Schadenfreude. 

Is  Snyder  to  blame?  The  same 
question    might   be   asked   of 
Charlie  Croker,  the  plagued  pro- 
tagonist of  Tom  Wolfe's  current 
best-seller,  A  Man  in  Full.  Like 
Snyder,  Croker  is  a  proud,  vigor- 
ous C.E.O.  in  his  60s,  married 
to  a  far  younger  woman,  accus- 
tomed to  the  spoils  of  success. 
Turpmtine  plantation  is  his  Lin- 
den Farm,  personal  chefs  and 
jets    his    corporate    style.    Like 
Snyder,  he  overreaches,  sinking 
millions   of  borrowed   money 
into  a  trophy  investment  just 
as  the  market  appears  to  turn. 
Like  Snyder,  he's  stunned 
when  his  creditors  grow  nas- 
ty, more  so  by  the  realization 
that  the  world  as  he  knows 
it  is  in  dire  danger  of  falling  apart.  Is 
Croker  to  blame? 
Well,  mostly— yes. 

art  of  life  is  what's  there,"  Snyder  muses 
from  his  40th-floor  corner  office  at 
Golden  Books  on  Seventh  Avenue  in 
Manhattan.  "And  Golden  was  there." 

The  office  is  modest  in  scale  compared 
with  his  famous  lair  at  Simon  &  Schuster, 
which  had  Georgian  furniture  and  a  pri- 
vate dining  room,  but  it  does  have  a  north- 
ward, panoramic  view  of  Central  Park. 
Snyder  is  nattily  dressed,  in  a  Hilditch  & 
Key  dress  shirt  set  off  by  sporty  suspend- 
ers, and  seemingly  bullish  about  his 
plight.  If  his  critics  find  him  nasty,  brutish, 
and  short,  to  borrow  Hobbes's  own  de- 
scription of  life,  he  has  a  blustery  charm 
that  can  be  quite  winning.  And  if  his  vanity 
is  always  on  display,  so,  too,  is  his  insecurity. 
"What  I  like  about  Dick,"  says  Christopher 
Cerf,  son  of  Random  House  co-founder 
Bennett  Cerf,  who  has  granted  Golden  a  li- 
cense for  his  children's-television  charac- 
ters, "is  that  he's  outrageously  arrogant  yet 
self-deprecating  about  it."  The  swagger  is 
real,  but  also  an  act.  As  is  the  voice,  that 
unique  basso  profundo  of  mangled  Boston 
and  mid-Atlantic  inflections  used  for  so 
many  decades  to  cover  the  original  Brook- 
lynese  that  Snyder  can  say  in  all  serious- 
ness that  it's  his  own. 

"The  day  after  I  was  fired,  Richard 
Bernstein  called  me  and  asked  me  to  come 


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aboard  Snydei  explains,  Bernstein,  a  New 
York  businessman,  owned  a  majority  share 
of  Golden  Hooks,  or  whal  was  then  called 
Western  Publishing.  "I  said,  'Good  idea, 
bad  timing.'  I  went  into  mourning,  without 
even  realizing  it." 

When  he  emerged.  Snyder  first  tried  to 
buy  Simon  &  Schuster  from  Viacom,  mak- 
ing a  blind  bid  of  S3  billion  through  the 
venture-capital  firm  E,  M  Warburg,  Pin- 
eus  &  Co.;  he  was  turned  down  Hal.  So 
he  started  meeting  with  Bernstein,  who'd 
made  a  killing  in  commercial  real  estate 
and  had  taken  over  the  then  privately 
owned  Western  from  Mattel  for  a  paltry 
$5  million  of  his  own  money  and  private 
financing.  Bernstein  took  the  company 
public  and  turned  a  quick  stock  profit  of 
SIOO  million,  ran  it  successfully  through 
the  1980s,  then  lost  interest  as  the  share 
price  and  earnings  sagged.  "We  had  $120 
million  in  debt,  if  memory  serves,"  Bern- 
stein recalls.  "We  had  $25  or  $30  million 
in  cash.  We  had  had  a  couple  of  bad 
years,  I'm  not  denying  it."  But,  he  adds. 
Golden  still  completely  dominated  the 
mass  market  for  children's  books. 

In  his  exile,  with  a  small  child  underfoot, 
Snyder  was  spending  much  of  his  time 
reading  about  education  in  America.  He 
was  fascinated.  And  here  was  Golden.  A 
mere  children's-book  company  held  little 


interesl  foi  eithei  Snydei  or  Barry  Diller, 

his  longtime  friend  and  willing  partner 
But  what  if  Golden  the  brand  could  be 
extended  to  create  ...  a  family  empire? 
Noi  only  Golden  Books  dusted  oil  and 
brought  up  to  date   but  Golden  family 

videos.  Golden  theme  parks.  Golden  books 
on  parenting.  Now.  lluil  would  be  big. 

»n  May  8,  1996,  after  more  than  a  year 
of  negotiations  with  Bernstein,  Snyder 
agreed  to  buy  Western  Publishing  for 
$65  million.  Most  of  the  money  came 
from  Warburg,  Pincus,  with  modest  antes 
from  Diller  and  from  Snyder  himself. 

"If  I  had  to  sum  up  Dick's  problem," 
says  Bernstein,  "I  think  he  was  trying  to 
show  up  [Viacom's  number  two]  Frank 
Biondi  and  Sumner  Redstone.  He  wanted 
to  get  even."  An  old  publishing  colleague 
puts  it  more  broadly.  "Dick  is  someone 
who  simply  has  to  win,  even  if  it  costs 
him  more  than  he  could  gain.  He  can't  be 
seen— by  himself— to  lose." 

Snyder  says  he  just  wanted  to  work 
again.  His  new  family  weighed  on  his  mind. 
"I  didn't  want  my  children  to  see  their  fa- 
ther at  home,"  he  says.  "And  I  think  there's 
nothing  worse  for  a  marriage  than  a  man 
being  at  home  and  having  lunch  with  his 
wife  every  day."  Money,  to  be  sure,  was  an- 
other incentive:  Snyder  negotiated  a  multi- 


million-dollar contract  that  would  come 
to  seem  excessive  as  the  company  tanked. 
Bui  Snyder  had  another,  more  prosaic 
reason  for  buying  the  company  that  pub- 
lished Golden  Books.  Some  40  years  ear- 
lier, when  he  was  just  starting  out  belore 
the  power  and  the  glory,  belore  anyone 
thoughl  he  was  mean  Snyder  had  worked 
as  a  Golden  Books  salesman.  Its  founder, 
Albert  Leventhal.  had  been  as  close  to  a 
mentor  as  Snyder  ever  hail.  Buying  Gold- 
en would  be  like  coming  full  circle  like 
starting  all  over  again. 

n  fact,  Snyder  had  had  no  interest  in 
publishing  when  he  got  out  of  the  army 
in  1958.  He  had  assumed  that  his  father, 
co-proprietor  of  a  men's  coat  company 
called  Duncan  Reed,  which  championed 
the  natural-shoulder  look,  would  hire  him. 
Instead,  his  father  walked  him  to  the  door 
of  his  office  at  200  Fifth  Avenue,  gave  him 
$50,  and  said,  "Better  a  son  than  a  part- 
ner." Walking  up  Fifth  Avenue,  Snyder  ran 
into  a  friend  who  was  on  his  way  to  a  job 
interview  at  Doubleday,  the  book  publisher. 
Snyder  went,  too,  and  was  hired  on  the  spot. 
Unfortunately,  the  job  was  in  an  airless 
room  at  Doubleday 's  Garden  City,  Long 
Island,  operations.  Snyder  scrapped  his 
way  up  to  marketing,  then  heard  about 
an  opening  at  a  sales  office  that  served 


Life 


Simon  &  Schuster,  Pocket  Books,  and 
Golden  Books.  The  office  was  in  Man- 
hattan; that  was  enough  for  Snyder.  He 
moved  over  in  1960. 

i  was  very  naive."  Snyder  says,  and 
perhaps  he  was.  An  only  child,  he  had 
grown  up  in  the  Midwood  section  of  Flat- 
hush,  at  that  time  a  solidly  middle-class 
Jewish  neighborhood.  "It  was  right  out  of 
the  old  Henry  Aldrich  radio  program  or 
Dobie  Gillis,"  says  his  oldest  friend,  Tully 
Plesser,  now  a  marketing-research  consul- 
tant. Not  for  a  while  did  Snyder  realize 
that  Doubleday  was  the  Catholic  house, 
in  a  predominantly  Wasp  industry,  and 
that  both  Simon  &  Schuste 
and  Random  House  ha 
been  started  by  Jews  in  th 
1920s,  in  part  as  a  reaction 
to  that.  "It  wasn't  that  you 
couldn't  get  a  job  if  you  were 
Jewish  at  the  wrong  place,"  Sny- 
der explains,  "but  you  were  limited."  In 
his  new  job,  Snyder  was  recognizing  the 
realities— though  the  caste  system  was 
breaking  down.  And  if  he  was  still  naive, 
he  was  also  ambitious. 

"They  had  an  encyclopedia  series  that 
was  sold  in  supermarkets,"  Plesser  recalls, 
"and  Dick  worked  on  the  promotions. 
You  could  get  the  first  volume  for  49 
cents,  then  the  second  for  99  cents,  until 


you  had  the  whole  15  volumes.  It  was  his 
first  taste  of  business."  Snyder  loved  it.  He 
would  stay  up  late  poring  over  the  num- 
bers, devising  new  promotions.  Soon  he 
won  a  sales  post  at  Simon  &  Schuster 
proper,  and  began  his  ferocious  rise. 

"I  want  it  all!,"  Snyder  told  a  young  Mi- 
chael Korda,  like  a  character  in  a  Jacque- 
line Susann  novel.  "Ambition  was  plainly 
there,"  recalls  Richard  Kluger.  a  Simon 
&  Schuster  senior  editor  at  the  time.  "He 
was  out  of  a  rough-hewn  background, 
marginally  literate;  you  never  thought  he 
appreciated  the  writing.  That  he  would 
pick  serious  books  as  his  path  to  glory 


I  i  spent  thousands  of  dollars  in  therapy  coming 


to  terms  with  that  anger,"  says  Snyder. 


and  power— instead  of,  say,  being  a  tough 
lawyer— was  odd,  and  sort  of  endearing." 

In  an  earlier  era,  Snyder  would  have 
been  stopped  cold  for  his  chutzpah  and 
forced  to  find  a  new  career.  But  more  than 
the  caste  system  was  changing.  The  family 
founders  of  New  York's  publishing  firms 
were  dying  off— Richard  Simon  had  passed 
away  just  before  Snyder  joined  the  compa- 
ny. Max  Schuster  was  in  his  decline— and 


new  blood  was  coming  in.  Snyder  benefit- 
ed from  that  without,  perhaps,  quite  realiz- 
ing why.  Later,  as  one  tradition  after  an- 
other fell  away,  he  would  have  the  power— 
and  the  pragmatism— to  embrace  each 
change,  appalling  those  who  yearned  for 
the  business  to  remain  a  gentlemen's  club. 
In  so  doing,  he  would  come  to  personify 
the  changing  nature  of  publishing  itself. 

I  t  Simon  &  Schuster,  the  founders'  de- 
ll mise  had  enabled  a  talented  young 
/ 1  editor  named  Robert  Gottlieb  to  be- 
come editor  in  chief,  and  by  1968  the 
books  he  had  brought  in,  among  them 
Joseph  Heller's  Catch- 
22  and  Chaim  Potok's 
The  Chosen,  had  made 
the  house  hot.  But  Gott- 
lieb nursed  dreams  of  his  own 
to  wield  control  unfettered  by 
publisher  Peter  Schwed.  Hold- 
ing him  back  was  a  doleful  figure  named 
Leon  Shimkin,  originally  the  bookkeeper 
to  Dick  Simon  and  Max  Schuster,  who 
had  managed  to  secure  a  majority  inter- 
est in  the  company.  Shimkin  felt  Gottlieb 
was  too  literary  to  nurture  a  broad  range 
of  books.  And  so,  one  memorable  day  in 
1968,  Gottlieb  announced  that  he  and 
two  colleagues,  Tony  Schulte  and  Nina 
Bourne,  were  decamping  to  take  over  ri- 


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val  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  the  tnosl  presti* 
i  ius  name  in  publishing,  al  tins  time  al- 
ready owned  by  Random  House.  They 
left  a  vacuum  that  Snyder  and  Korda 
made  haste  to  fill, 

Korda  simply  moved  into  Gottlieb's  of- 
fice and  began  acting  as  editor  in  chief, 
though  Shimkin  refused  to  grant  him  the 
title.  Snyder  was  number  two  to  Schwed, 
hut  says  he  look  charge  anyway,  as  much 
out  of  indignation  as  anything  else.  "The 
first  thing  Schwed  did  was  take  the  entire 
heritage  of  Simon  &  Schuster  and 
sign  it  over  that  night,"  Snyder  re- 
calls. "Every  writer  from  Doris 
Lessing  to  Robert  Crichton,  some 
50  to  60  books  in  all.  Bob  Gott- 
lieb said,  'These  authors  want  to 
go  with  me,'  and  Peter  Schwed 
said.  'Well,  that's  the  way  publish- 
ing should  be.'  A  lot  of  my  diffi- 
culties with  the  Establishment, 
and  then  the  press,  came  because 
I  said  'That's  wrong'  about  things 
like  that."  (Retorts  Schwed,  "I 
allow  those  authors  who 
were  particularly  attached 
to  Bob  Gottlieb  to  go  with 
him,  but  they  were  no  more 
than  a  handful  and 
not  the  heritage  of 
Simon  &  Schus- 
ter.") But  in  fight- 
ing to  enforce  publishing  contracts 
as  legal  documents  instead  of  treat- 
ing them  as  gentlemen's  agreements, 
he  won  only  the  makings  of  a  bad 
reputation. 

When  Snyder  examined  Simon 
&  Schuster's  backlist — titles  that  re- 
mained profitable  year  after  year- 
he  found  little  besides  Dale  Car- 
negie's perennial  best-seller.  How  to 
Win  Friends  and  Influence  People. 
This  was  a  crisis:  without  some  quick 
moneymakers,  Simon  &  Schuster  would  be 
in  trouble.  "So  we  took  this  book  we  had 
on  toilet  training,"  Snyder  recalls,  "and  we 
called  the  author  and  said,  'How  about  if 
we  call  it  Toilet  Training  in  Thirty  Minutes? 
Could  you  write  it  that  way?'  We  thought 
an  hour  was  too  long,  and  no  one  would 
believe  10  minutes.  'Ah,  sure,'  he  said,  'why 
not?'  And  that  was  how  we  started." 

The  big  break  came  in  1974,  with  Bob 
Woodward  and  Carl  Bernstein's  All  the 
President's  Men.  By  then,  Snyder  had 
replaced  Schwed  (who  no  longer  had  to 
feel  Snyder's  "hot  breath  on  the  back  of 
my  neck")  and  made  Korda's  editorship  of- 
ficial, cementing  a  partnership  that  would 
last  for  30  years  without  a  cross  word  be- 
tween them.  Each  respected  the  other's 
strengths;  both  saw  publishing  as,  above 
all,  a  business.  Both  men  were  married 


with  children    Snyder  and  his  first  wife, 

Ruth,  had  a  young  son,  Matthew,  and  a 
daughter,  Jackie;  Korda  had  a  young 
son  though  both  marriages  were  heading 
for  divorce,  partly  because  of  the  long 
hours  each  man  was  putting  in  at  the  of- 
fice And  both  felt,  when  offered  a  chance 
to  commission  All  the  President's  Men  for 
$50,000,  that  the  price  was  right.  But  Sny- 
der was  the  catalyst.  "Dick  got  behind  it  al 
a  lime  when  people  didn't  believe  Water- 
gate was  true,"  says  Woodward.  As  a  re- 


to  glory-instead  of,  say,  being  a  lawyer-was  endearing. 


\ 


proved,  assumed  the  trappings  of  corpo- 
rate success  with  a  gusto  that  startled  his 
colleagues.  "Much  as  I  like  Dick,  I  couldn't 
help  laughing  when  one  day  back  then  we 
were  doing  a  Unlay  show  about  publish- 
ing," recalls  Gottlieb,  "and  Dick  arrived 
with  his  publicity  person  and  his  car  and 
driver  only  a  few  blocks  from  his  office.  I 
thought,  Who  needs  that  on  the  most 
beautiful  day  of  the  year?" 

The  lifestyle  grew  grander—Hollywood 
grand— with  the  sale  in  1975  of  Simon  & 
Schuster  to  Gulf  &  Western,  which 
owned  Paramount  Studios.  New 
inheritance  taxes  and  lack  of  in- 
terest on  the  part  of  heirs  were 
pushing  privately  held  publish- 
ing companies  into  public  hands— 
another  sea  change  from  which 
Snyder  would  benefit.  To  others  in 
the  publishing  world,  Charlie  Bluh- 
dorn  of  Gulf  &  Western  seemed 
a  little  Napoleon  who  shouted  him- 
self red  in  the  face  and  might  just 
be  insane.  A  Viennese  refugee  who 
made  a  fortune  at  age  21  by  cor- 
nering the  market  in  malt, 
Bluhdorn  had  gone  on  to 
acquire  a  hodgepodge  of 
companies    ranging 
from  auto-parts  man- 
ufacturers to  cement 
producers.  None  had  anything  to 
do  with  books.  But  when  Shimkin 
declared  his  desire  to  sell  Simon 
&  Schuster  to  Bluhdorn  for  $11 
million— a  rosy  sum  at  the  time— 
Snyder  saw  what  the  future  might 
be.  "The  good  times  are  coming," 
he  told  Korda.  "Trust  me." 


m 


i 


THE  LITTLE  FOXES 

Top,  S&S  editors  Michael  Korda  and 

Joni  Evans,  1988;  above,  Dustin  Hoffman, 

Carl  Bernstein,  Bob  Woodward,  and 

Robert  Bedford  at  the  premiere  of  the  film 

version  of  All  the  President's  Men, 

Washington,  D.C.,  April  4,  1976. 


suit,  he  says,  "I've  always  put  Dick  and 
[Woodward's  boss,  former  Washington  Post 
editor]  Ben  Bradlee  in  the  same  list  of 
characters,  who'll  say.  This  is  what  it  is, 
it's  the  truth,  let's  go  with  it.'" 

Snyder  was  the  one  who  decided  not  to 
distribute  advance  galleys  of  the  book  to 
reviewers  and  booksellers— a  radical  move 
that  made  it  front-page  news  when  it  ap- 
peared. It  was  followed  by  other  Simon  & 
Schuster  best-sellers  like  Judith  Rossner's 
Looking  for  Mr.  Good  bar  and  Jane  Fon- 
da's Workout  Book.  Snyder,  his  instincts 


luhdorn  let  Snyder  run  the  com- 
pany as  he  wished.  He  also  en- 
couraged corporate  perks  on  a 
scale  even  Snyder  had  never  imag- 
ined. Soon,  along  with  his  chauffeured 
town  car,  Snyder  had  a  private  chef,  Fe- 
lipe, and  shuttled  back  and  forth  between 
New  York  and  the  West  Coast  on  Gulf  & 
Western's  corporate  jet.  "He  would  have 
been  very  out  of  fashion  today,"  Snyder 
says  of  Bluhdorn.  "He  would  say,  i  don't 
want  you  to  get  your  groceries  or  hail  a 
cab.  I  just  want  you  to  concentrate  on 
working— that's  a  good  investment  for  me.' 
And  we  worked  18  hours  a  day!  That's  the 
part  they  don't  get  when  they  write  about 
executive  perks." 

The  most  notorious  of  the  perks  was, 
in  a  sense,  apocryphal.  Snyder  didn't  real- 
ly have  a  private  elevator.  But  he  was  re- 
puted to  have  his  chauffeur,  Charles,  alert 
a  security  guard  to  hold  one  elevator  for 
him  as  his  car  approached  the  Simon  & 
Schuster  building.  As  Snyder  strode  to- 
ward it  he  would  allegedly  glower  at  any- 


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one  else  who  seemed  about  to  join  him 
Once  an  executive  named  Ai  Reube 
bolted  into  the  elevatoi  withoul  realizii 
his  boss  was  there,  Reuben  pressed 
but  the  elevator,  oddly  enough,  went  di 
rectly  to  14,  where  Snyder  had  Ins  office 
'•.Sec'.'"  Snyder  declared,  "Even  the  eleva 
tor  knows" 


At  Simon  &  Schuster,  profits  soared,  and 
not  just  because  Snyder  was  working 
hard.  Random  House,  still  larger  than 
Simon  &  Schuster  at  the  time  but  looking 
over  its  shoulder,  had  editors  of  literary 
distinction.  Snyder's  team  was  plugged  in- 
to politics,  pop  culture,  and  any- 
thing else  that  could  generate 
the  next  best-seller.  Along  with 
Korda,  Snyder  had  Alice  May- 
hew,  who  went  from  editing  All  the 
President's  Men  to  work  on  much 
of  Simon  &  Schuster's  most  distin- 
guished nonfiction;  Phyllis  Grann,  who 
graduated  from  mysteries  to  running 
Pocket  Books,  the  paperback  arm;  and 
Nan  Talese,  who  nurtured  Margaret  At- 
wood  and  Ian  McEwan.  Then  there  was 
Joni  Evans,  an  editor  of  several  best-sellers 
at  William  Morrow,  whom  Snyder  had 
hired  to  handle  the  newly  lucrative  field  of 
subsidiary  rights,  and  whom,  in  1978,  he 
married. 

Over  the  next  decade,  the  saga  of  Dick 
and  Joni,  from  its  romantic  beginnings  to 
its  vitriolic  end,  would  be  a  central  soap 
opera  for  the  entire  industry.  How  Evans 
started  Linden  Press,  her  own  imprint  at 
Simon  &  Schuster,  to  distance  herself 
from  Snyder  at  work;  how  Snyder's  cor- 
porate rise  brought  her  back  to  fill  his 
old  job  as  head  of  Simon  &  Schuster's 
adult  books;  how  the  pressure  of  that  de- 
stroyed the  marriage  and  led  Evans  to 
become  editor  in  chief  of  rival  Random 
House— those  chapters  remain  all  too 
vivid  today.  With  Snyder,  the  defining  as- 
pect of  them  was  anger— anger  and  a 
rage  to  win. 

By  this  time  Snyder's  temper  had  be- 
come the  stuff  of  legend.  "Look,  that's 
history,"  he  pleads.  "I'm  a  different  man 
today.  And  I  can  tell  you,  I  spent  thou- 
sands of  dollars  in  therapy  coming  to 
terms  with  that  anger."  The  old  "tantrum- 
mer,"  as  his  wife  teasingly  calls  him,  does 
seem  positively  mellow.  But,  for  the  many 
editors  angrily  fired  by  him  over  the 
years— so  many  that  they  used  to  hold  a 
cocktail  party  every  summer— the  image 
of  a  gentle  Dick  Snyder  is  hard  to  square 
with  memories  of  the  red-faced,  furious 
boss,  spewing  profanities  and  showering 
them  with  scorn.  So  intense  was  the  pres- 
sure that  three  editors,  either  while  at  Si- 
mon &  Schuster  or  soon  after  leaving, 
had  heart  attacks. 


editors  at  S&S  had  heart  attacks. 


BEHIND  THE  THRONE 

Top,  Evans  and  Snyder,  November  1986; 

above,  Snyder  and  S&S's  legendary  nonfiction 

editor  Alice  Mayhew,  New  York,  1990. 


And  yet,  for  those  who  stood  up  to 
him— and  generated  best-sellers— Snyder 
could  be  a  loyal,  even  inspiring  leader. 
Promising  editors  from  other  houses 
would  be  wooed  with  a  routine  none  has 
ever  forgotten:  after  inviting  them  over  for 
a  drink  at  his  corporate  apartment  in  the 
St.  Moritz  hotel,  Snyder  would  invoke  Si- 
mon &  Schuster's  new  greatness,  then 
stand  them  by  the  window  overlooking 
Central  Park.  "Come  to  work  for  me,"  he 
would  say,  "and  someday  all  this  will  be 
yours."  Salaries  were  the  highest  in  the 
business— battle  pay— and  for  all  of  Sny- 
der's bullying,  he  liked  editors  who  were 
tough  enough  to  make  the  grade.  "He 
would  accede  to  our  passions,"  says  Jim 
Silberman,  former  head  of  the  Simon  & 
Schuster  imprint  Summit  Books.  "It's 
something  that  has  gone  out  of  publish- 
ing." Simon  &  Schuster  may  be  scoffed  at 
as  the  commercial  house— what  Roger 
Straus  of  Farrar,  Straus  &  Giroux  even  to- 
day calls  a  "quick-buck  company"  which 


was  headed  by  a  publisher  who  "added 
nothing  to  literature"  but  as  Silberman 
observes,  "In  retrospect,  there  was  some- 
thing much  more  vital  at  S&S  than  in 
publishing  houses  now."  And  for  the  in- 
ner circle  Korda,  Mayhew,  and,  while 
she  was  married  to  him.  Join  Lvans  Sny- 
der was  like  General  Patton:  tough,  but 
exhilarating. 

More  than  anyone  else  in  publishing, 
Snyder  saw  over  the  horizon.  He  saw  that 
chain  stores  were  proliferating;  rather  than 
bemoan  the  demise  of  independents,  he 
published  more  books  to  fill  the  new  stores' 
shelves.  More  stores  meant  more  sales, 
which  meant  he  could  pay  top  authors 
more  -sometimes  poaching  them 
from  other  houses,  which  scandal- 
ized his  peers— and  still  make  mon- 
ey. Above  all,  he  saw  that  publishing, 
like  other  businesses,  would  soon 
consolidate.  And  with  the  death  of 
Bluhdorn  of  a  heart  attack  at  age  56  in 
1983,  Snyder  saw  his  chance  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  that  trend,  too. 

Snyder  was  still,  in  one  sense,  naive:  a 
lousy  corporate  politician.  In  the  wake 
of  Bluhdorn's  death,  he  backed  a  dark 
horse,  Jim  Judelson.  When  the  job  went 
instead  to  Martin  Davis,  a  difficult,  sour 
man  who  had  come  up  through  the  Para- 
mount publicity  department,  Snyder  had 
an  enemy  as  his  boss.  Yet  Davis  realized 
Snyder  was  too  good  to  let  go,  and  when 
he  began  selling  off  the  many  Bluhdorn 
acquisitions  it  made  no  sense  to  keep,  he 
saw  that  the  cash  he  was  stockpiling 
ought  to  go,  in  part,  to  buying  book  com- 
panies for  Simon  &  Schuster. 

Not  just  any  book  companies,  however. 
Textbook  companies.  Snyder  realized  that 
no  matter  how  hard  he  drove  his  editors, 
and  how  many  best-sellers  they  published, 
adult  books  was  a  tippy  business.  Text- 
books, unglamorous  as  they  might  be, 
were  huge  and  steady  earners  with  a  cap- 
tive audience. 

Over  the  next  decade,  Snyder  bought 
dozens  of  textbook  companies,  including 
Prentice  Hall  and  other  businesses,  for  a 
total  of  about  $2  billion.  Simon  &  Schus- 
ter was  now  America's  biggest  publish- 
er—bigger even  than  Random  House, 
which  had  dwarfed  it  when  Snyder  began 
(and  which  from  1980  until  last  year  was 
owned  by  Advance  Publications,  which 
publishes  this  magazine).  "Random  House 
was  the  class  Jews,  Simon  &  Schuster  the 
declasse  Jews,"  says  former  Simon  & 
Schuster  editor  Dan  Green.  And  the  de- 
classe Jews  had  triumphed!  A  decade  lat- 
er, Viacom,  Snyder's  nemesis,  would  sell 
most  of  the  same  bundle  to  Pearson,  the 
English  media  conglomerate,  which  owns 
Viking  Penguin  and  Putnam,  for  nearly 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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1>4  billion    ,i   huge  Windfall  for  Viacom 
and,  for  Snyder,  vindication  bittersweet 

In  retrospect,  the  revolution  Snyder 
helped  begin  overthrew  him,  .is  revolu- 
tions tciul  to  do,  At  the  time,  Joni  I  vans 
and  Martin  Davis  appeared  the  more  im- 
mediate threats. 

The  divorce  proceedings  lasted  nearly  as 
long  as  the  marriage.  Snyder  lost,  ap- 
pealed, lost,  appealed  again.  And  was 
forced,  by  a  clearly  exasperated  judge,  to 
surrender  50  percent  of  his  marital  assets 
several  million  dollars.  (Lvans  was  forced 
to  give  Snyder  50  percent  of  her  more 
modest  marital  assets  as  well.)  With  part  of 


stroyed  each  othei  professionally.  I  mean, 

lie's  a  vci  \  mil  in. in.  and  I  have  a  happy 
life,  but  I'm  doing  Golden  Hooks  because 
of  Marls  Davis,  and  Marly  Davis  is  do- 
ing nothing  because  of  Marty  Davis." 

Davis,  perhaps,  is  to  blame  lor  making 
Paramount  a  takeover  target  in  1993.  It 
was  he  who  spoiled  Time  Inc.'s  friendly 
merger  with  Warner  Communications,  mak- 
ing ever  higher  oilers  that  forced  Warner 
to  lake  on  an  additional  $9  billion  of  debt 
to  lend  him  off.  A  suitor  with  so  much  cash 
suddenly  looked  attractive  to  Viacom,  the 
entertainment  conglomerate  Sumner  Red- 
stone had  built  from  MTV,  Nickelodeon, 
and  Showtime.  Emboldened,  Viacom  near- 


ihai  the  4  years  left  on  his  contract  be  cx- 
lended  to  10,  with  his  SI  million  annual 
salary  doubled.  Biondi  had  emerged  from 
the  loin  Seasons  lunch  assuming  he  and 
Snyder  would  walk  the  five  blocks  back  to 
the  office,  only  to  see  Snyder's  chauffeur, 
(  luilcs,  awaiting  his  master  at  the  opened 
door  of  his  black  town  car.  For  a  top  ex- 
ecutive  in  a  corporation  that  stressed  col- 
legiality  and  no  frills,  it  was  an  image  that 
stuck.  When  the  salary  demands  came, 
conveyed  by  high-priced  lawyer  Joseph 
Flom,  Biondi  and  Redstone  shook  their 
heads.  This  guy  doesn't  gel  ii. 

The  night  before  Snyder  was  to  make  his 
first  presentation  to  Viacom's  division  heads. 


"A  town  car!  Who  doesn't  have  a  town  car?  Who  doesn't  go  to  the  Four  Seasons? 


The  guy  has  this  incredibly  puritan  attitude/'  says  Snyder's  wife,  Laura  Yorke. 


her  settlement,  Evans  bought  a  weekend 
house  just  five  miles  from  Linden  Farm— a 
contemporary,  glass-walled  aerie  overlook- 
ing a  river— but  never  socializes  with  Sny- 
der and.  according  to  friends,  never  even 
thinks  about  him  anymore.  She  now  works 
as  a  literary  agent  at  William  Morris. 

Davis  was  Snyder's  other  nemesis.  The 
brooding  chairman  of  what  was  now 
called  Paramount  phoned  almost  every  day 
to  offer  criticism  or  question  some  deci- 
sion. Davis  did  have  some  cause  for  ire: 
the  Dick-and-Joni  relationship  had  had 
sharp  reverberations  throughout  the  com- 
pany. And  when,  after  Evans's  departure, 
Snyder  took  up  with  an  attractive  young  Si- 
mon &  Schuster  editor  named  Laura  Yorke, 
Davis  may  have  had  cause  to  insist  Yorke 
take  a  job  outside  the  house.  But  profits 
stayed  high,  and  if  there  was  a  reason,  other 
than  personal  vindictiveness,  for  Davis  to 
change  the  name  of  Simon  &  Schuster  Pub- 
lishing to  Paramount  Publishing,  no  one 
today  can  say  what  it  was.  "First,  it  was 
dumb,"  Snyder  says.  "Second,  it  was  de- 
signed to  antagonize  only  one  person:  me. 

"In  the  end,"  Snyder  adds,  "we  de- 


ly  managed  its  own  friendly  merger  with 
Paramount— until  Barry  Diller  played  the 
role  of  the  spoiler.  Snyder  had  grown 
close  to  Diller  in  the  Bluhdorn  days,  when 
Diller  was  head  of  Paramount  Pictures. 
Fairly  or  not,  he  was  seen  as  a  Diller  sup- 
porter. When  Viacom  outbid  Diller,  Sny- 
der might  have  left.  But,  he  says  quietly, 
"it  would  have  meant  leaving  something  I 
loved.  I  could  never  have  walked  away." 

1  t  first,  the  signals  from  Paramount's 
tl  new  owner  seemed  encouraging.  Red- 
/ 1  stone  spoke  of  Simon  &  Schuster  as  the 
jewel  in  Paramount's  crown  and,  at  Sny- 
der's request,  restored  its  corporate  name. 
Over  a  friendly  lunch  at  the  Four  Seasons 
with  Viacom  C.E.O.  Frank  Biondi,  Snyder 
asked  for  higher  compensation,  and  Biondi 
seemed  amenable.  But  within  weeks  Red- 
stone and  Biondi  thought  they  were  getting 
signals  of  a  very  different  sort  from  Snyder. 
Snyder,  they  felt,  was  more  imperious 
than  they  could  have  imagined.  He  hired 
public-relations  man  John  Scanlon  to  bur- 
nish his  personal  image— a  move  Davis 
had  expressly  forbidden— and  demanded 


a  corporate  lawyer  called  him  at  home  to 
ask,  casually,  if  he  would  come  to  the  meet- 
ing a  few  minutes  early.  "Dick,"  his  new 
wife  told  him,  "incomprehensible  as  this  is 
to  you,  they're  going  to  fire  you  tomorrow." 
So  they  did.  Snyder  wandered  back  to 
his  office  in  a  daze  and  called  his  wife, 
who  came  right  over.  As  they  were  crying, 
the  phone  rang:  Frank  Biondi.  Why,  Bion- 
di wanted  to  know,  was  Snyder  still  in  his 
office?  "Frank,"  Snyder  said  slowly,  "I've 
been  here  32  years.  It's  going  to  take  me  a 
little  while  to  organize  my  things." 

The  day  after  Snyder  took  charge  of 
Golden  Books-May  9,  1996-he  paid 
a  visit  to  the  corporate  headquarters  of 
Walmart,  his  biggest  customer.  He  knew 
he  was  in  a  different  business  now,  of  dis- 
count consumer-goods  chains.  He  may 
not  have  realized  how  different.  "We  made 
books  for  the  children  of  the  masses,  not 
the  classes,"  says  Richard  Bernstein.  "We  ; 
sold  tonnage.  Our  customers  were  as  likely  \ 
to  eat  the  books  as  read  them." 

Snyder  expected  a  genial  reception.  He 
was  shocked.  The  Walmart  buyer  told  him    3 


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that  Walmarl  no  longer  believed 
anything  <  lolden  said,  and  would 
be  just  ;is  happy  if  Golden  pulled 
out  for  keeps,  Snyder  learned  .1 
new  phrase  that  day:  fill  rale  the 
rate    at    which    a    publisher    was 

able  to  keep  store  shelves  rilled, 
Golden,  it  seemed,  was  so  disor- 
ganized that  ii  could  not,  in  any 
expeditious  manner,  restock  the 
Golden  titles  that  sold,  or  take 
away  those  that  foiled  to. 

Snyder  went  back  to  his  office 
to  learn  that  Golden,  incredibly 
For  a  book  publisher,  had  no  sales 
reports  at  all.  It  knew  how  many 
books  went  out;  it  had  no  idea 
what    happened    to   them   after 
that.  Worse,  Golden  sent 
most  of  its  books  in  shrink- 
wrapped  discount  packs  of, 
say,  a  dozen  different  ti- 
tles. If  its  warehouse  ran 
out  of  one  of  those  titles, 
the  packs  couldn't  go  out.  It  w 
a  nightmare. 

"They  spent  months  doing  due 
diligence,"  Bernstein  observes. 
"There  were  eight  guys  from 
Ernst  &  Young  in  our  offices— 
and  all  of  this  came  as  a  sur- 
prise to  them?"  Snyder  retorts, 
"Due  diligence  is  'Here  are  the 
accounts  receivable;  here  are 
the  accounts  payable;  here  are  the 
contracts— are  they  valid?'  That's 
not  where  we  saw  anything 
[wrong]."  The  due-diligence  team 
didn't  look  at  fill  rates.  Or  frayed 
customer  relations.  Or,  as  Snyder 
glumly  terms  it,  "the  gatekeeper  problem." 
A  bookstore,  he  observes,  lets  a  publisher 
charge  whatever  he  thinks  the  market  will 
bear.  "The  [discount]  store  says,  'I  want  it  at 
$1.29,  and  if  you  don't  give  it  to  me,  some- 
one else  will.'"  Here  was  the  king  of  Simon 
&  Schuster,  locked  in  to  a  few  pennies' 
profit  on  every  Poky  Little  Puppy  book. 

If  only  Snyder  had  had  a  few  veterans  of 
the  business— the  mass-market  children's- 
book  business,  not  those  elegant,  hardcover, 
Caldecott  Award-winning  children's  books 
that  Simon  &  Schuster  published  at  $16— 
he  might  have  been  forewarned,  and  per- 
haps forearmed.  Yet  almost  immediately, 
Snyder  fired  virtually  everyone  in  the  com- 
pany's operating  management.  The  old 
guard  was  stuck  in  its  ways,  he  says.  But  as 
a  result,  Bernstein  observes,  "he  entirely 
eliminated  the  institutional  memory." 

Instead,  Snyder  turned  to  the  world  he 
knew.  He  tried  to  persuade  Alice  May- 
hew  to  join  him— and  was  furious  with 
her  when  she  refused.  He  had  better  luck 
with  Robert  Asahina,  a  younger  Simon  & 


"There's  nothing  worse  for  a  marriage  than  a  man 


having  lunch  with  his  wife  every  day/7  says  Snyder. 


BOOKMAKERS 

Top,  Snyder  and  Alfred  A.  Knopf  publisher 

Sonny  Mehta  at  the  National  Book  Awards, 

New  York,  November  1990;  above, 

Golden  investor  Barry  Diller  and  Snyder, 

New  York,  1993. 


Schuster  editor,  who  agreed  to  start  an 
adult  Golden  Books  line— on  subjects  of 
interest  to  parents  of  Golden  Books 
children— for  a  risk-softening  salary  of 
$200,000  with  a  bonus  provision  that 
might  yield  him  two  times  that  much  over 
his  pay.  To  be  president,  Snyder  hired,  at 
a  comparable  salary,  Willa  Perlman,  who 
had  headed  up  children's  books  at  Simon 
&  Schuster  and  was  ready  for  a  change. 
"I  had  come  to  a  place  in  my  career  with 
children's  books,  that  books  as  the  output 
of  intellectual  property  were  not  enough 
to  sustain  me  any  longer,"  she  explains. 
Golden  was  so  . . .  different.  "It  would  be 
like  learning  a  new  language." 

Asahina,  at  least,  was  starting  a  line  of 
books  of  the  kind  he  knew  about,  for 
bookstores,  not  discount  chains,  so  he 


would  be  unaffected  by  many 
ol  Golden's  problems.  But,  like 
his  boss,  he  acted  as  if  he  were 
still  at  Simon  &  Schuster,  pay- 
ing best-selling  author  Stephen 
Covey  such  a  high  advance  for 
The  7  Habits  oj  Highl)  Effective 
Families  as  a  debut  title  that  the 
book  would  manage  nearly  to 
sell  out  its  print  run  of  500,000 
copies  and  still  lose  money. 
Perlman  faced  a  more  immedi- 
ate problem.  Nearly  all  of  Gold- 
en's  key  licenses— for  movie  and 
TV  characters- were  up  for  re- 
newal. 

"Our  Disney,  our  Children's 
Television   Workshop,   Barbie, 
arney  ..."  Perlman 
cks  them  off  ruefully. 
These  were  "anchor"  li- 
censes that  provided, 
she  says,  75  percent  of 
Golden's  revenue.  And 
due  to  Bernstein's  haphazard  man- 
agement, she  claims,  most  were 
ready  to  jump  ship.  (Bernstein 
takes  exception  to  that.  "Typical- 
ly, character  licenses  are  in  the 
one-  to  three-year  period,  so  if 
one  made  the  statement  that  all 
of  the  licenses  had  less  than  three 
years  left  on  them,  sure!  But  what 
did  that  mean?") 

Perlman  persuaded  nearly  all 
of  Golden's  anchor  licensees  to 
re-up.  But  at  sizable  cost.  When 
Golden  chose  to  renew  its  long- 
time license  to  publish  books 
featuring  Disney  characters  for 
$47.5  million— about  10  times  what  Gold- 
en had  paid  Disney  in  the  past,  accord- 
ing to  Bernstein— the  industry  was  agog. 
In  fact,  Disney's  animated  movies  were 
already  declining  steadily  in  profitability. 
But  to  Golden  the  license  seemed  cru- 
cial, both  for  profit  and  prestige.  "They 
had  us  over  a  barrel,"  says  one  Golden 
executive,  sighing.  "New  management  . . . 
bad  times." 

Undeterred  by  these  portents  of  trouble, 
Snyder  set  about  building  his  family 
empire.  He  paid  $81  million  for  Broad- 
way Video,  a  company  run  by  Saturday 
Night  Live  creator  Lome  Michaels,  which 
owns  Lassie,  the  Lone  Ranger,  Pat  the 
Bunny,  and  other  Golden-like  icons.  He 
commissioned  new  Lassie  episodes  for 
Animal  Planet  cable  and  new  Pat  the  Bun- 
ny home  videos.  He  looked  into  Golden 
theme  parks  and  Golden  play  centers. 

Snyder  wanted  it  all,  and  he  wanted  it 
fast.  Rather  than  settle  for  some  Band- 
Aid  approach  to  the  sales-report  and  fill- 
rate  problems,  he  called  for  a  whole  new 


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integrated  financial  system.  Bernstein  had 
put  in  a  more  modest  sales-report  system 
called  Wisdom.  But  it  wasn't  yet  up  to 
speed.  As  underlings  tinkered  with  it, 
Snydei  ordered  a  vastlj  target  one,  simi- 
lar, as  he  puts  it,  to  a  German  system 
called  sap.  From  Wisdom  to  sap!  But  it 
was.  Snyder  concedes  now.  too  complex 
ami  expensive  to  make  sense  for  Golden 
Books.  "It  gives  yon  a  747,"  he  says. 
"when  yon  may  need  a  two-engine  prop." 

Another  such  mistake,  says  Snyder,  was 
the  brand-new,  $40  million  printing  plant. 
For  decades  Golden  had  printed  its  own 
hooks  at  a  Dickensian  plant  in  Racine. 
Wisconsin.  Virtually  no  other  publisher  in 
America  did  that,  but  it  made  sense  for 
Golden  as  long  as  it  stuck  to  those  little 
Golden  books  and.  perhaps,  a  few  color- 
ing and  activity  books.  Now  Snyder  want- 
ed to  publish  all  kinds  of  new  books.  A 
publisher  who  knew  the  market  might 
have  jobbed  out  the  work  to  factories  in 
Asia.  Instead,  Snyder  built  a  huge  state- 
of-the-art  plant— which  still  couldn't  han- 
dle Snyder's  outsize  pub- 
lishing plans. 

As  unfortunate  was  the 
decision  to  move  most 
of  the  company's  white- 
collar  staff  from  Ra- 
cine, where  Western  had 
been  based,  to  Manhattan.  Racine  had  its 
share  of  social  problems,  and  the  employ- 
ment pool  was  small.  But  the  importation 
of  hundreds  of  workers  to  a  new,  six-story 
office  space  in  New  York  to  conjure  up  a 
new  Golden  Books— even  as  Snyder's  exec- 
utive team  was  trying  desperately  to  whack 
Golden's  7,000  titles  down  to  a  manage- 
able 1,000  or  so— was,  at  best,  an  opti- 
mistic decision.  It  also  led  to  oddly  famil- 
iar rumors  that  made  their  way  around  the 
publishing  world.  Fancy  offices.  A  person- 
al chef.  A  corporate  jet! 


'I 


ook  at  this  paneling!,"  Snyder  says  in  the 
hallway  outside  his  office.  He  knocks  on 
a  piece  of  attractive,  white-blond  wood. 
"The  cheapest  paneling  you  can  buy."  The 
floors  are  small,  he  goes  on,  and  very  nar- 
row. Because  the  owner  of  the  Seventh  Av- 
enue building.  Marshall  Rose,  sits  on  Gold- 
en's  board.  Snyder  got  the  space  cheap. 

Over  a  deli-ordered  tuna-fish-sandwich 
lunch  in  what  is,  admittedly,  a  very  small 
executive  conference  room,  Snyder  answers 
the  next  question  before  it's  asked.  "O.K.— 
the  chef,"  he  says.  "I  said,  'Let's  get  a  chef 
who  will  make  a  communal  lunch,  and  we 
can  use  the  boardroom.  And  we'll  give 
lunch  there  every  day.'  Chef  implies  dining 
room— there  was  no  dining  room.  Chef  im- 
plies waiter— there  was  no  waiter.  And 
what  he  cooked  mostly  was  health  food." 
And  the  jet? 


"Racine  is  a  place  yon  cannot  gel  to," 

Snyder  says  indignantly.  "Anil  I  was  not. 

at   my  age.  with  two  little  kid  I    | -   to 

spend  all  my  lime  making  air  connections 
to  Racine.  So  we  got  one-eighth  ol  a (  ita 
lion  II,  which  we  had  the  right  to  sell 
back.  The  fact  was  it  was  a  tin  can,  the 
slowest  jet  ever  made.  You  couldn't  stand 
up!  If  you  wanted  to  go  to  the  bathroom, 
you  had  to  back  in!" 

Nevertheless,  as  Snyder  admits,  all  this 
led  to  an  image  problem.  Perhaps,  he 
says,  he  did  get  spoiled  in  the  Bluhdorn 
days.  All  the  jets,  the  drivers,  the  private 
apartments.  "You  get  used  to  all  that  and 
don't  think  about  the  public  perception  of 
it  as  much  as  perhaps  I  ought  to  have 
done."  As  damaging,  says  one  former 
Golden  executive,  was  the  stiff  corporate 
protocol.  "Golden  was  all  about  dress 
codes  and  decorums  and  a  level  of  for- 
mality that  was  death  for  a  company  that 
should  have  been  entrepreneurial." 

None  of  it  would  have  mattered  if  Gold- 
en  Books  had  begun  showing  quarterly 


"I  negotiated  a  contract. . . .  I'm  sorry  if  it  offends 


some  people,  but  it's  a  lifetime  of  work  to  get  here.7' 


profits.  Unfortunately,  all  the  empire- 
building  schemes  sapped  cash— eventually 
$300  million.  And  though  millions  of 
Golden  books  were  selling,  the  margin  of 
profit  on  each  was  very,  very  small.  Much 
money  out,  very  little  in;  quarter  by  quar- 
ter, the  losses  grew. 

In  hindsight,  Snyder  may  have  taken 
on  Golden  at  an  unpropitious  time.  The 
last  of  the  baby  boomers'  children  were 
growing  up;  the  core  market  was,  per- 
haps, shrinking.  Home  videos  and  CD- 
ROMs  were  taking  larger  market  shares, 
and  children,  perhaps  as  a  result,  ap- 
peared to  be  growing  faster  out  of  their 
"Golden  years."  Moreover,  many  of  the 
discount  chains  Golden  relied  on— Cal- 
dor's,  Bradlees,  Ames,  and  the  like— were 
ailing,  victims  themselves  of  thin  profit 
margins.  And  after  decades  of  virtually 
owning  the  market.  Golden  had  rivals. 
As  a  result,  Snyder  says,  mass-market 
children's-book  sales  in  general  were  flat 
or  going  down. 

It's  a  convincing  explanation— except 
that  Golden's  main  rival,  the  Ohio-based 
Landoll  Company,  has  grown,  according 
to  its  president,  Martin  Myers,  800  per- 
cent in  the  last  five  years.  "Overall,  the  en- 
vironment of  children's  books  is  a  fantas- 
tic one,"  he  volunteers.  "And  actually  the 
profit  margin  on  licensed-product  goods 
is  excellent."  Landoll's  Rugrats  and  Blue's 
Clues  are  two  of  the  industry's  top-selling 


properties.  The  key,  Myers  says,  is  to  be 
lean  and  efficient  enough  to  deliver  the 
best  value  "It's  hard  to  deliver  value.''  he 
says,  "when  you're  sitting  in  a  beautiful  of- 
fice overlooking  <  entral  Park 


nespile  the  losses.  Golden's  board  decid- 
ed, in  September  1997,  to  recognize 
Snyder's  efforts  in  the  "turnaround" 
with  a  huge  pay  raise.  The  board,  which 
included  Diller,  New  York  arts  patroness 
Linda  Janklow  (the  wife  of  literary  agent 
Mort  Janklow,  who  is  a  good  friend  of 
Snyder's),  and  Lome  Michaels,  increased 
Snyder's  base  salary  of  about  $500,000  to 
$950,000  -and  made  the  increase  retroac- 
tive to  January  1997.  According  to  Graef 
Crystal,  the  financial  analyst  who  tracks 
executive  compensation,  that  meant  Sny- 
der was  being  paid  151  percent  more  than 
the  average  C.E.O.  of  a  similar-size  com- 
pany. But  that  was  just  the  beginning. 

Before  taking  over,  Snyder  had  been 
granted  599,465  shares  of  Golden  at  $8 
a  share,  about  what  Golden  was  traded 
for  when  the  company 
changed  hands.  Osten- 
sibly, he  bought  the 
stock;  in  fact,  it  was 
loaned,  with  the  loan 
soon  forgiven.  Over  the 
next  10  years,  he  could 
sell  the  stock  whenever  he  liked  and  keep 
whatever  premium  it  might  yield  over  $8 
a  share.  But  if  the  stock  plummeted,  he 
could  still  cash  out  for  $8  a  share.  Or, 
as  Crystal  says,  "Heads  I  win,  tails  you 
lose!"  After  acquiring  another  84,967 
shares  under  the  same  terms  in  Septem- 
ber 1996,  Snyder's  no-lose  stake  stood  at 
$5.5  million. 

In  September  1997,  Golden  awarded 
Snyder  a  "target"  bonus  of  100  percent  of 
his  new  $950,000  salary,  then  let  him  trade 
that  for  options  worth  twice  that  much,  or 
$2  million.  So  in  a  year  in  which  Golden 
would  lose  $50  million,  Snyder  was  com- 
pensated, on  paper  at  least,  $3  million. 
The  options  were  a  time-delayed  benefit,  as 
was  the  $250,000  pension  Snyder  would 
get  whenever— however— he  left  the  compa- 
ny. Still,  he  was  doing  very  well. 

"I  negotiated  a  contract  with  what  would 
be  a  compensation  committee  if  and  when 
we  took  control,"  Snyder  says  adamantly. 
"And  followed  it.  And  I'm  sorry  if  it  of- 
fends some  people,  but  it's  a  lifetime  of  work 
to  get  here."  Had  he  known  how  much 
money  Golden  would  lose  over  the  next 
year,  he  says,  he  and  his  board— dominated 
by  Warburg,  Pincus's  John  Vogelstein— like- 
ly would  have  modified  the  pay  package 
accordingly.  But  due  to  the  problems  he  in- 
herited, he  says.  Golden  had  no  clear  fi- 
nancial statements  until  18  months  after  his 
arrival.  True,  except  the  board  did  know 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     1999 


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that  Golden's  stock  had  dropped  21.5  per- 
cent, in  .i  market  thai  ovei  the  same  period 
had  gained  4K  percent. 

I  <>i  Snyder,  the  money  came  at  ;i  partic- 
ularly apt  lime.  That  same  month  he 
moved  ins  family  into  a  lowly,  eight-story 

Upper  East  Side  town  house  just  oil' Park 
Avenue.  I  le  had  bought  il  lor  a  reported 
$4.9  million,  with  a  mortgage  of  just  $1 
million,  and  ordered  $2  million  of  work 
done  to  it. 

n  the  top-floor  room  she  uses  as  an  of- 
fice at  the  Snyders'  town-house  home, 
Laura  Yorke  olTers  her  own  theory  for 
why  things  went  wrong  at  Golden.  "I 
think  he  was  so  traumatized  by  the  press 
he'd  gotten  that  when  he  came  to  Golden 
it  affected  the  way  he  managed,"  she  says. 
"He  had  just  heard  and  read  so  many 
times  about  the  beast  that  he  was  that  he 
vowed  not  to  tell  anybody  they  were  doing 
anything  wrong  at  all." 

Yorke  is  a  seasoned  book  editor  who 
prides  herself  on  her  old-school  line  edit- 
ing, and  clearly  would  have  made  her  way 


by  Kenny  Sail/man.  and  deliberately  lets 
the  elevator  descend  past  the  livin).'  room 
and  dining  room  to  the  ornately  wood- 
paneled  second-floor  library,  where  Sny- 
der awaits,  '•puritan"  is  not  the  first  word 

that  comes  to  mind.  Especially  not  to 

Marco  Martelli.  the  high-end  contractor 
who  did  the  renovation. 

At  the  Snyders'  request,  Martelli  began 
work  on  an  accelerated  schedule  in  1997 
while  architect  Michael  Rubenslcin's  plans 
were  still  being  drawn  up.  The  initial 
budget  was  about  $1.3  million,  though 
major  aspects  of  the  renovation  remained 
unspecified.  Over  the  12  months  the  job 
took,  Martelli  says  he  was  given  400 
change  orders— on  paper.  The  added 
work  swelled  the  total  budget,  he  says,  to 
$3,070,000.  Yet  when  the  last  bills  were 
submitted,  Snyder  refused  to  pay.  "The  to- 
tal stiff  is  $1,078,000,"  says  Martelli.  Of 
that,  about  $600,000  is  due  to  his  own 
firm  for  fees,  labor,  and  materials;  the  bal- 
ance is  due  to  his  subcontractors.  Martelli 
says  he  is  suing;  Snyder  says  he  is  suing 
him.  In  fact,  Snyder  claims,  he  paid  11 


In  the  end  we  destroyed  each  other  professionally,"  says 


Snyder.  "I'm  doing  Golden  Books  because  of  Marty  Davis. 


in  publishing  without  her  husband's  help. 
Still,  her  relationship  with  Snyder  has  af- 
fected her  career:  first  by  forcing  her  to 
leave  Simon  &  Schuster,  more  recently  by 
inducing  her  to  go  to  Golden  to  help  Bob 
Asahina  start  the  new  adult  line.  Personal- 
ly, she  got  dragged  into  the  denouement 
of  Snyder's  divorce  wars  with  Joni  Evans. 

The  Dick-and-Joni  saga  might  have 
given  another  woman  pause  about  get- 
ting involved  with  the  boss,  but,  Yorke 
says  simply,  "I  fell  in  love  with  him.  And 
there's  so  much  to  love  about  him!"  She 
counts  the  ways:  brilliant,  charismatic, 
funny,  a  huge  heart.  "And  the  fact  that 
he's  volatile?  Well,  you  want  to  put  me 
on  the  couch  for  six  years  and  figure  that 
out?  Yeah,  O.K.,  maybe  I  was  used  to  it. 
Who  knows?  But  the  fact  of  the  matter  is 
that  he's  not  like  that  anymore."  (One 
former  Golden  executive  disagrees:  "He 
never  changed.  He'd  have  one  of  his 
screamers,  and  I'd  just  say,  'When  the 
lithium  kicks  in,  call  me  back.'")  Nor, 
she  says,  does  he  care  about  corporate 
perks  now,  if  he  ever  did.  "The  limo  is  a 
town  car!"  she  says.  "Who  doesn't  have 
a  town  car?  Who  doesn't  go  to  the  Four 
Seasons?  Dick  is  not  excessive  in  those 
ways.  In  his  tastes  the  guy  has  this  in- 
credibly puritan  attitude." 

Perhaps.  But  as  Yorke  conducts  a  re- 
luctant tour  of  her  new  home,  decorated 


of  Martelli's  12  monthly  bills  with  many 
signed  change  orders.  The  12th,  he  says, 
is  for  $500,000,  with  unsigned  change  or- 
ders, followed  by  a  charge  for  $600,000  to 
cover  worker  benefits  already  paid.  "This 
is  a  classic  New  York  story,"  he  says  grim- 
ly, suggesting  the  contractor  is  shaking 
him  down. 

"My  case  is  very  clear,"  says  Martelli. 
Architect  Rubenstein  agrees.  "I  think  the 
court  will  decide  in  his  favor,"  he  says. 

t  was  on  April  14,  1998,  that  Snyder  re- 
alized how  desperate  matters  had  be- 
come. He  had  just  returned  from  a 
65th-birthday  driving  trip  through  Tuscany 
with  his  wife.  Before  he'd  left,  C.F.O  Philip 
Rowley  had  showed  him  the  monthly 
numbers.  They  needed  tweaking,  but  they 
weren't  too  bad.  Unfortunately  the  SAP-like 
financial  system  was  still  unreliable.  Sny- 
der went  back  to  his  office,  picked  up  the 
March  numbers,  and  said,  "My  God, 
we're  going  to  go  bankrupt." 

Sales  were  sharply  off,  cash  reserves 
down  almost  to  nothing,  first-quarter  loss- 
es frighteningly  high.  That  was  Snyder's 
moment  of  truth.  Rowley  had  already  re- 
signed to  become  group  finance  director 
of  the  English  company  Kingfisher  P.L.C. 
So  Snyder  took  over  the  day-to-day  run- 
ning of  the  place. 

From  Golden's  already  reduced  payroll 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      1999 


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Publishing 


Of  about  1,400,  several  hun-  *  Jft 
dred  more  workers  were  let 
go.  The  printing  plant  was 
put  up  for  sale.  The  new, 
adult-book  line,  despite  its  m  ij 
growing  promise,  was  put 
up  for  sale,  too.  Nearly  all 
the  brand-extending  schemes 
were  put  on  hold:  no  Pat 
the  Bunny  floor  coverings, 
no  Golden  theme  parks. 
Grimly,  Snyder  reduced 
his  New  York  office  space 
from  six  floors  to  three. 
The  boardroom  was  dis- 
pensed with,  as  was  the 
chef.  The  one-eighth  share 
of  the  corporate  jet  was 
sold  back. 

None  of  it  was  enough 
to  stop  the  stock  from  its 
sickening  slide  as  Golden's 
first-quarter  numbers  be- 
came known.  The  compa 
ny's  nearly  $300  million 
debt  was  now  greater  than 
its  value:  after  creditors 
were  paid,  the  common 
stock  would  be  worthless. 

Meanwhile,  Golden  was 
hit  by  a  class-action  suit  from  sharehold- 
ers. In  the  suit,  filed  by  New  York  law 
firm  Milberg  Weiss  Bershad  Hynes  &  Ler- 
ach,  Snyder  and  his  team  were  accused  of 
having  issued  deceptively  rosy  forecasts, 
quarter  after  quarter,  all  the  while  know- 
ing that  the  company's  finances  failed  to 
support  them.  Snyder  denies  the  charges: 
the  forecasts  were  always  accompanied  on 
10K  reports  by  all  the  obligatory  num- 
bers. But  the  fact  that  Golden  was,  as 
Snyder  admits,  "flying  blind"  without  a 
good  financial  system  for  two  years  does 
bring  into  question  why  it  felt  it  could  be 
quite  so  upbeat. 

By  December,  Golden  was  trading  at 
about  45  cents  a  share,  and  the  company 
had  defaulted  on  interest  payments  to  its 
senior  bondholders.  That  was  bad.  By 
law,  the  whole  $149  million  Golden  owed 
those  bondholders  was  pushed  from  the 
"long-term  debt"  side  of  the  ledger  to  the 
"current  liabilities"  column,  nearly  dou- 
bling the  latter  to  $267  million.  That  was 
worse.  The  bondholders  gave  Snyder  until 
February  16  to  come  up  with  a  Hail  Mary 
plan  or  be  forced  into  Chapter  11  bank- 
ruptcy proceedings.  That  was  about  as 
bad  as  things  could  get. 

ow  the  deadline  has  come  and  gone.  A 
deal,  after  many  days  of  waiting  for 
one  last  call  from  a  reluctant  creditor, 
has  been  reached.  The  company  is  saved— 
for  now— and  Snyder  is  still  in  charge.  But 
at  considerable  cost.  "Basically,  everything 


HAPPY  AT  LAST 

Snyder  and  his 

wife,  Laura  Yorke,  at 

their  $4.9  million 

Manhattan  town  house, 

March  U,  1999.    5^-i" 

— ■> -•".'.    ~TT^r  oi' 


"I  fell  in  love  with  him.  The  fact  th 


m 


imiiHij 


lil-tifFillWlt'M 


we  worked  for  for  six  months  happened," 
Snyder  reported  one  day  in  early  March. 
"It's  the  happiest  of  possibilities— under 
the  circumstances.  But  that's  not  to  say 
that  everyone  is  happy." 

Happiest  are  the  bondholders  and 
holders  of  convertible  preferred  shares 
who  have,  in  essence,  traded  debt  for 
ownership  of  the  company.  The  senior 
noteholders  who  were  owed  $149  million 
will  get  60  cents  on  the  dollar,  and  42.5 
percent  of  the  company.  The  convertible 
preferred  shareholders  don't  get  cash, 
but  they  do  get  50  percent  of  the  equity. 
As  a  result,  Golden's  suffocating  debt 
load  of  nearly  $300  million  will  be  re- 
duced to  $87  million,  so  that  the  compa- 
ny can  continue.  Legally,  the  deal  is  a 
Chapter  11  bankruptcy  proceeding,  since 
a  bankruptcy  judge  has  to  bless  it.  But 
it's  the  mildest  sort,  because  the  bond- 
holders and  management  have  agreed  to 
the  terms. 

Not  consulted  were  the  shareholders  of 
Golden  common  stock.  By  the  terms  of 
the  deal,  to  make  the  math  work,  the 
common  stock  will  be  annulled.  Golden 
is  a  more  tightly  held  company  than,  say, 
IBM:  perhaps  only  hundreds,  rather  than 
hundreds  of  thousands,  of  people  own 
common  shares  of  Golden.  But  anyone 
who  does  just  lost  his  stake.  "Don't  for- 
get," Snyder  says,  "buying  stock  doesn't 
mean  you  make  money." 

The  original  investors,  Snyder  hastens 
to  add,  will  have  their  preferred  stock 


wiped  out,  too.  So  War- 
burg, Pincus  has  lost  per- 
haps $60  million  of  the 
original  $65  million  pur- 
chase price,  Diller  and  Sny- 
der the  balance.  But  they, 
at  least,  get  the  remaining 
slices  of  the  new  pie:  5 
percent  equity  for  Snyder, 
Diller,  and  Warburg,  Pin- 
cus, 2.5  percent  in  addition 
for  Snyder  himself.  "He's 
being  given  2.5  percent  for 
having  taken  the  company 
into  bankruptcy— that's  a  hell 
of  a  reward,"  says  Bernstein, 
who  as  the  owner  of  15  per- 
cent of  Golden's  common 
shares  has  lost  $40  million 
and  says  he  may  sue  to 
block  the  deal. 

Snyder  has  surrendered 
the  $5.5  million  in  stock 
options  that  Golden 
granted  him.  He's  also 
lost  the  $2  million  in 
"target  bonus"  stock  op- 
tions he  got  in  Septem- 
ber 1997,  since  that  stock 
was  unprotected  and  is 
now  worthless.  And  at  no  point,  he  says, 
either  before  or  during  the  tailspin,  did  he 
sell  a  single  share  of  stock.  "I'm  commit- 
ted to  this  company,"  he  says.  "I've  lost 
money  along  with  it;  not  until  it  prospers 
will  I  prosper,  too."  For  good  measure, 
he's  agreed  to  a  salary  cut. 

Other  costs  are  more  personal.  Last 
fall,  Barry  Diller  resigned  from  the 
board.  In  the  margin  of  a  letter  request- 
ing comment,  he  writes,  "It's  all  a  great 
disappointment  to  me,  and  I  decided 
that  1  would  sever  my  relationship  to  the 
investing  partners  that  went  into  [Gold- 
en] and  with  it,  hopefully,  any  involve- 
ment in  their  and  D.  Snyder's  affairs 
now  or  in  the  future."  Linda  Janklow, 
too,  has  resigned.  Snyder's  senior  hires 
continue  to  leave:  the  C.F.O.  hired  to  re- 
place Rowley  last  year  left  in  January: 
Asahina  has  gone  to  be  the  editor  in 
chief  of  Broadway  Books;  and  now  that 
the  adult  line  is  being  sold  to  St.  Mar- 
tin's Press,  Laura  Yorke  may  follow  it 
there,  though  that  leave-taking  would  be 
merely  professional. 

But  Snyder's  eyes  brighten  at  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  is,  in  a  sense,  where  he 
was  when  he  and  Korda  took  over  a 
bereft  Simon  &  Schuster  and  had  to  be 
scrappy  to  make  it  survive.  "That's  exactly 
right,"  he  says.  "Thirty  years  later,  we're 
going  to  have  to  be  scrappy.  And  nimble. 
And  fleet.  But  we  can  do  it." 

Humbled  at  last,  with  nothing  to  lose, 
perhaps  he  can.  □ 


MAY      1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


L 


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eyewear 


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"'Hill      •••        Hill  "  «**!«{ 

'         \\\\\y         II         :... 

i|i)|:      liiiiii    4    S# 


I 


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rM  starring 
Where, 


Name  and  occupation:  Menu  SuvarUtetress. 
Helped  redefine  the  term  "teenage  wasteland"  in: , 
Ashle\  Judd  and  Morgan  Freeman,  Gregg  Araki's  AiUhere. 
and  The  Ra^e:  Carrie  2.  Soon  to  be  taking  a  Judy  Garland-ish  turn  in: 
imeriean  Pie,  as  a  smitten  chohgiri  ,*„  And  a^BTurner-ish  turn  in: 
American  Beauty  (co-starring  Kevin  Spaccy  dMf  Annelle  Benin,"1 
as  a  coquettish  high-schooler.  WhySuwi's  next 
What  You  Did  Last  Summer:  The  Musical:  'in  Amen, 
actual  \oice  for  the  singing  parts.  I  hadn't  sui 
younger,  so  n  was  good  to  bring  ittack."  In  k 
Kevin  Spacey's  midlife-crisis  fantasy  girl.  Quite  an  enviable  role:  "Wo 
with  Ke\in.  I  was  just  awestruck.  He  was  great.  And  m_\  charact 
is  \er\  flamboyant  and  can  he  a  total  snot    it  was  really  fun  ^ 
to  do.  Why,  if  she's  not  careful,  Suvari  may  become  the  next  armed-forces " 
pinup  girl:  "I  have  three  brothers  who  went  to  the  Citadel 
and  are  in  the  arm\  now.  The)  love  thai  I'm  an  actress 
the\  are  always  brajyiinii."  john  uii  Lll  s 


AY     19  9  9 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     ISABEt     SNYDER 


VANITY     FAIR  13  1 


D.C.  confidential:  Forbes  FYI 
editor  and  Little  Green  Men  author 
Christopher  Buckley,  at  the 
Forbes  offices  in  New  York.  Buckley'. 

privileged  speed-dialees  include, 
from  top,  wife  Lucy,  editor  Jon  Karp. 

and  longtime  friend  John  Tierney. 


t  certainly  makes  sense  that  humorist  Christopher  Bi 
ley  wouldn't  get  too  serious  about  his  speed-dial  hat 
Presidential  memoirs,  drug  dealers,  the  tobacco  lob 
_    self-help  books,  and  alien  abductions  have  all  been  wort 
fodder  for  the  Buckley  wit,  so  why  shouldn't  he  stick 
skewer  through  a  request  for  his  cell-phone  pecking  order 
Dad  William  F.  and  mom  Pat  cut  off  the  weekly  allowanc< 
long  ago,  so  they  aren't  in  his  alphabetically  listed  directory.  But 
wife  Lucy  gets  frequent  calls  when  Buckley,  46,  commutes  from  his  Wash- 
ington, D.C,  home  to  New  York  as  the  editor  of  the  quarterly  magazine 
Forbes  FYI.  "The  Eagle  has  landed"  prompts  Lucy's  usual  response: 
"Great.  Tell  the  Eagle  to  take  a  cab."  John  Tierney,  best  friend  since 
Yale  Daily  News  days,  gets  buzzed  as  punishment  for  co-authoring  God 
Is  My  Broker  with  Buckley.  As  does  Random  House  editor  Jon  Karp, 
who  has  stuck  with  Buckley  through  four  of  his  seven  books,  in- 
cluding the  recent  Little  Green  Men.  But  Karp's  lofty  perch 
may  not  last.  "He  refused  my  suggestion  of  titling  it  Mid- 
night in  the  Garden  of  Little  Green  Men,"  says  Buckley, 
who  also  contributes  to  The  New  Yorker,  The  Washington 
Post,  and  The  New  York  Times.  Then  Buckley  the  satir- 
ist takes  over:  Chief  Justice  William  Rehnquist  is  pro- 
grammed for  chats  "about  the  death  penalty,  how  many 
stripes  he  should  have  on  his  robe— you  know,  guy  stuff." 
As  is  Nicole  Kidman.  "But  she  hasn't  actually  ever  re- 
turned my  calls."  One  last  chance  to  be  straight:  Do  you 
have  a  digital  pet  peeve?  "Cellular  jerks  sitting  next  to  me 
on  the  Metroliner  who  start  a  conversation  with  'Herb? 
Jerry.  Let's  run  the  numbers.'"  —MELISSA  DAVIS 


Basil  Waller 

architect 

The  Houses  of  McKim, 

Mead  &  White. 

by  Samuel  G.  White 

(Rizzoli). 

"A  design  revelation. 

This  partnership  created 

some  of  the  most 

inspired  arid  beautiful  rooms 

I  have  ever  seen. " 


VANITY     FAIR 


Night-Table 
Reading 

Regine 

owner,  Rage  supper  club 

Sophie's  Choice, 

by  William  Slyron  (Vintage). 

"Tragic  destiny  is  very 

moving  to  me,  and  I  love  all 

the  fantasy,  drama,  and 

poetry  of  this  book.  Not  only  is 

he  one  of  my  favorite 

authors,  but  it  reminds  me 

of  my  background." 


Scott  Dikkers 

editor  in  chief, 

The  Onion,  and  author, 

Our  Dumb  Century 


Sidn  Phillips 

actress,  Broadway's  Marlene 

Les  Jardins  du  Consulat, 

by  Angelo  Rinaldi  (Gallimard). 

"It's  a  wonderful  book 
and  well  worth  the  effort.  Angelo 

Rinaldi  is  my  new 

French  pinup  —  brains  and  charm 

combined. ' 


I  Am  Jackie  Chan:  My  Life  in  Action, 
by  Jackie  Chan  with  Jeff  Yang 

(Ballantine). 

"His  life  is  mythic.  He's  my  hero. 

I  want  to  write  a 

Jackie  Chan  screenplay." 


_ 


Klwbrtb  Arfea 

5th 
avenue 

"p*  j "(Elizabeth  Arden 

Ota  avenue 

It  takes  you  there 


oldsmith's     Macy's 


o>* 


ft*** 


Counterclockwise  from  top  righ 
water  color  rendering  of  a  1998  Geoffrey  Beene 
full-length  dress;  Audrey  Hepburn  as  the  irres 
Sabrina  in  the  1954  film  of  the  same  name; 
legendary  art  director  Alexey  Brodovitch  in  hh 
Harper's  Bazaar  office,  circa  1950;  Jacques  Henri 
Lartigue's  Grand  Prix  of  the  Automobile 
Club  of  France,  1912;  an  enticing  promotional 
poster  for  Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  1937; 
a  Carol  Friedman  shot  of  trumpeter  Chel  Baker 
at  the  Village  Vanguard  in  New  York,  1978; 
San  ford  Tousey's  illustrated  cover  of  the 
1937  children 's  book  Cowboys  of  America. 


ar  is  like  peanuts  and  tattoos— you 
can't  have  just  one.  Novelist  WARD  JUST'S  A 
Dangerous  Friend  (Houghton  Mifflin)  is  set  in 
Vietnam  at  the  beginning  of  the  Bad  War,  and 
charts  the  devolution  of  an  innocent  American 
crusading  for  democracy.  And  in  PAT  BARKER'S  Another  World  (Farrar,  Straus  &  Giroux),  a 
101-year-old  war  veteran  must  exorcise  the  demons  of  his  past  before  he  can  die. 

Also  this  month:  A.  M.  HOMES  looses  her  deviant  brilliance  on  the  degenerate  suburbs 
and  the  corrupted  happiness  of  a  married  couple  in  Music  for  Torching  (Rob  Weisbach 
Books).  Beauty  and  the  Beene  (Abrams)  features  drawings  of 
Geoffrey  Beene  fashions  by  SIRICHAI  interwoven  with  fanciful 
text  by  LAURA  JACOBS.  The  late  humorist  VERONICA  GENG  lobs 
satirical  hand  grenades  in  Love  Trouble  (Mariner),  an  instantly 
classic  collection  of  essays  and  fiction.  Simon  & 
Schuster  editor  in  chief  MICHAEL  KORDA  draws 
on  41  years  in  the  book  biz  to  wildly  dish 
page-burners  like  Harold  Robbins,  Jackie  Su- 
sann,  and  Tennessee  Williams  in  Another  Life: 
A  Memoir  of  Other  People  (Random  House). 
Mary  Pickford  Rediscovered  (Abrams),  by  KEVIN 
BROWNLOW,  presents  rare  pictures  of  "America's 
Sweetheart"  of  silent  film.  LYNN  JOHNSON  and 
MICHAEL  O'LEARY'S  All  Aboard!  (Chronicle)  cap- 
tures the  glory  days  of  railway  travel.  STACY 
SCHIFF  plumbs  the  depths  of  the  enigmatic  soul 
mate  of  the  author  of  Lolita  in  Vera  (Mrs.  Vladimir 
Nabokov)  (Random  House).  Children's-book  covers 
from  1880  to  1960  are  collected  by  HAROLD  DARLING 
in  From  Mother  Goose  to  Doctor  Seuss  (Chronicle). 
GABRIEL  BAURET  pays  homage  to  the  Big  Daddy  of 
20th-century  magazine  art  direction  in 
Alexey  Brodovitch  (Assouline).  From 
Arbus  to   Weegee,   PETER  STEPAN'S 
Icons  of  Photography  (Prestel)  amasses 
the  work  of  the  century's  pre-eminent 
shutterbugs.  The  inimitable  gamine 
who  launched  a  thousand  cigarette 
holders  is  deconstructed  once  again, 
this  time  in  PAMELA  CLARKE  KEOGH'S 
Audrey  Style  (HarperCollins).  MICHAEL 
ISIKOFF,  the  Newsweek  bulldog  re- 
porter who  unleashed  the  Lewinsky 
mess,  sinks  his  teeth  back  into  the 
scandal  that  swallowed  America  in 
Uncovering  Clinton  (Crown).  CAROL 
FRIEDMAN'S  evocative  portraits  of 
swinging  jazz  musicians  such  as  Miles  Davis 
and  Sarah  Vaughan  take  center  stage  in  The  Jazz 
Pictures  (Tondo).  Have  you  got  a  road  fever  that 
only  a  diet  of  no-tell  motels,  truck  stops,  and  bars 
with  mechanical  bulls  can  cure?  Then  toss  CAMERON 
TUTTLE'S   The  Bad  Girls  Guide  to  the  Open  Road 
(Chronicle)  into  your  glove  box,  and  put  the  pedal  to 
the  metal.  1  call  shotgun.  — elissa  schappell 


3S£* 


MAY      199 


GUCCI 

sunglasses 


S52JP  -w. 
i        ,      • 


In  More  Mr.  iicn  liny 


The  second  coming  of  Donny  Osmond 


n  the  70s.  with  the  sibling  variety  program  The  Donny 
and  Marie  Show  and  more  than  20  bubblegum  hits, 
Donny  Osmond  became  America's  ultra-wholesome 
teen  idol.  In  the  lM)s  with  a  stunning  comeback  run  in 
Joseph  and  the  Amazing  Technicolor  Dreamcoat  and 
Donny  and  Marie  recently  reincarnated  as  a  talk  show— 
Osmania  lias  struck  again.  This  month,  as  Donny  pre- 
pares to  publish  his  autobiography.  Life  Is  Just  What 
You  Make  It.  GEORGE  WAYNH  tracks  down  the  clean-cut 
icon  to  discuss  his  relationships  with  Mormonism,  show 
business  . .  .  and  milk. 

George  Wayne:  G.W.  has  a  lot  to  ask  Donny  Osmond,  so  let's  get 
right  into  it.  How  is  this  talk  show  doing? 
Donny  Osmond:  It's  going  great— we've  been  picked 
up  for  next  year.  The  ratings  are  up. 
G.W.  Is  it  true  you  still  drink  milk  every  morning'.' 
D.O.  If  I  could.  I  would  slap  you  right  now! 
G.W.  It's  a  simple  question,  Donny. 
D.O.  I  hate  milk.  Oh,  we're  going  there 
with  this  interview,  are  we,  George?  We're 
gonna  take  it  in  that  direction,  huh? 
G.W.  Not  at  all— well,  maybe,  if  you  want  to 
go  in  the  gutter.  I  meant  the  milk  of  human 
kindness— that  milk. 
D.O.  Oh,  yeah-right! 

G.W.  Well,  even  though  you're  41.  you're  still  the 
Colgate  poster  child.  But  how  old  do  you  feel? 
D.O.  I  feel  25.  I  feel  25  because  of 
boys.  I  got  married  quite  young,  at  20. 
G.W.  Was  it  an  arranged  man 
D.O.  No.  I  met  this  wonderful 
woman  when  1  was  16.  We 
dated  for  three  and  a  half 
years. 

G.W.    Well,   you  certainly 
have  that  seed  of  plenty. 
D.O.  So  it  seems. 
G.W.  It's  part  of  your  reli- 
gion—procreation. 
D.O.  No,  it's  not  part  of  the 
religion.  I  come  from  a  big  fain 
ily— nine  children.  And  I  enjoy  a 
large  family. 

G.W.  Why  is  it  that  G.W.  has  never 
seen  or  heard  of  a  Negro  Mormon? 
D.O.  We  do  have  a  large  membership 
of  African-American  individuals. 
G.W.  So  it's  a  myth  that  the 
Mormon   church   is 
racist'.' 

D.O.  Oh,  it's  a  total 
myth. 


VANITY     FAIR 


G.W.  As  is  polygamy'' 
D.O.  Exactly. 

G.W.  Would  Monica  Lewinsky  he  we/come  in  the  Mormon 
church'.' 

D.O.  Sure.  There  are  certain  provisions  for  repentance,  but 
anyone  is  welcome.  The  one  thing  we  just  can't  stand  is 
bigamy— and  prejudices. 

G.W.  A  friend  of  mine  refuses  to  believe  that  you  were  a  virgin 
when  you  got  married.  I  told  him  that  I  truly  believed  you. 
D.O.  Did  you  read  the  part  in  the  book  about  Howard  Stern? 
When  he  said,  "Get  Steven  Spielberg  on  the  phone— he  be- 
lieves in  E.T.,  but  he's  not  going  to  believe  this." 
G.W.  Give  G.  W  some  of  your  vital  statistics.  How  tall  are  you? 
D.O.  Five  nine,  on  a  good  day. 
G.W.  Weight? 

D.O.  One  sixty. 
G.W.  Wow!  You  keep  in  shape. 

D.O.  I  have  to— a  film  version  of  Joseph  and 
the  Amazing  Technicolor  Dreamcoat  is  com- 
ing up,  and  I  gotta  get  back  in  that  loin- 
cloth. 

G.W.  Shoe  size? 

D.O.  Where  are  you  going  with  this, 
George?  Are  you  planning  to  buy  me  a  gift? 
^1   I'm  a  size  13.  Actually,  I'm  a  size  9. 
iffW  G.W.  Sperm  count' 

D.O.  [Laughs.]  Quite  a  bit. 
G.W.  Obviously!  You  and  Michael  Jackson  are 
virtually  the  same  age.  Do  you  ever  talk  with 
him  about  the  golden  years  of  the  70s? 
O.  Once  I  was  over  at  his  house,  and  we 
stayed  up  until  two  A.M.,  and  that's  all  we 
talked  about— the  good  old  days. 
G.W.  Would  you  say  Peter  Gabriel  saved 
your  career? 
D.O.  Yeah,  that  would  be  a  good 
way  to  put  it.  He  asked  me  what 
was  going  on  with  my  music, 
and  said,  "You  could 
have  another  hit  rec- 
ord." I  couldn't  be- 
lieve  that   someone 
believed   in   me.   He 
gave  people  the  reason 
to  look  at  me  again. 
G.W.  Your  book  is  certainly  one 
of  the  most  inspirational  G  W.  has 
ever  read.   But  one  more  question: 
Are   you   as    well  endowed  as    Tom 
Jones? 

D.O.  That's  for  me  to  know  and  no  one 
to  ever  find  out— but  my  wife! 
G.W.  You  hang  on,  Sloopy!  Thanks,  Donny  Osmond! 


Pmjp 


The  I  rdiinl /iivil /  Files 

The  Diary  of  Josh  Freelantzovitz  of  Flushing,  Queens 


MONDAY    Ugh— more  brothy  vapors  wafting  up  from  the  Happy  Pleasure  Noodle  Shop 
downstairs.  Tough  to  adjust  to  Flushing  after  seven  years  in  Park  Slope.  But  what  can  you  do 
when  they've  quadrupled  your  rent  and  your  annual  income's  down  to  the  $3,000  that  Time 
Out  New  York  pays  for  writing  its  cyber-cafe  listings?  Anyway,  the  Slope's  been  ruined  by  Hol- 
lywood types— you  can't  walk  three  feet  down  Seventh  Avenue  without  bumping  into  Steve  Busce- 
mi.  Here  on  40th  Road,  it's  totally  different.  The  rents  are  amazing:  Mrs.  Ling,  my  landlady,  charges  $150  a 
month,  and  my  room  comes  hot-wired  with  an  ISDN  line  for  fax  and  modem!  Plus,  there're  plenty  of  cheap  eats  on  my  block,  as 
I've  learned  from  The  New  York  Times— Eric  Asimov  reviews  a  place  out  here  every  week! 

TUESDAY  Drafted  query  letter:  "Dear  Mr.  Brill:  Let  me  just  state  at  the  outset  what  a  big  fan  I  am  of  Brill's  Content.  As  an  ethi- 
cal journalist  myself,  I  feel  that  I  have  much  to  offer  you  in  terms  of  story  ideas.  Leafing  through  the  pages  of  Vogue,  for  exam- 
ple, I  have  detected  all  manner  of  conflicts  of  interest.  To  name  but  one:  Vogue  accepts  advertising  from  Helmut  Lang— and  then 
features  Helmut  Lang  dresses  in  its  editorial  pages!  This  is  inexcusable.  But  my  real  purpose  in  writing  to  you  is  to  suggest  that 
you  hire  me  to  act  as  ombudsman  to  your  outside  ombudsman,  Bill  Kovach.  As  I'm  sure  you  know,  an  outside  ombudsman  with- 
out accountability  is  a  corrupt  ombudsman.  In  my  capacity  as  ombudsman's  ombudsman,  I  would 
monitor  Mr.  Kovach  to  ensure  that  he  doesn't  violate  the  social  contract  between  himself  and  those 
he  ombudses.  I,  too,  would  periodically  submit  to  monitoring,  by  a  third  ombudsman.  Perhaps 
in  time  this  would  lead  to  a  spin-off  publication,  8ri//'s  Ombudsman,  in  which  I  would  of 
course  demand  equity.  I  look  forward  to  discussing  terms  with  you.  Yours,  Josh  Free- 
lantzovitz." Modemed  letter  over  on  new  ISDN  line.  Wow,  fast! 

WEDNESDAY  Up  at  9:45.  Checked  E-mail.  No  response  from  Steve  Brill  yet.  Head- 
ed out  for  breakfast:  52-cent  pork  bun  at  Shanghai  Niceness  Palace.  Sad  not  to  be 
able  to  afford  $4  lattes  anymore,  but  that'll  change  when  I  win  my  suit  against 
Woody  Allen.  Clearly,  he  based  the  Kenneth  Branagh  character  in  Celebrity  on  me— 
Leo  must  have  told  him  about  my  abbreviated  tenure  in  his  posse. 

THURSDAY  Up  at  9:47.  Checked  E-mail.  No  response  from  Steve  Brill  yet.  But  a  hot 
E-mail  tip  from  my  friend  Tom  Slushpilitz:  Harvey  Weinstein's  people  are  putting  out 
feelers  for  someone  to  ghost  his  autobiography.  Tom  says  the  deal  is  Harvey  gets  an  ad- 
vance of  $750,000,  of  which  $500  goes  to  the  writer,  who  also  gets  .05  cents  for  every 
>py  sold  past  the  million  mark.  Sounds  decent.  Even  better,  it'd  give  me  a  foot  in  the  door  re 
;nt  indie-road-movie  screenplay,  Kolumbia  Kounty,  about  a  handsome  but  moody  freelance 
writer  (Vincent  Gallo?)  whose  parents  stop  sending  him  money,  so  he  embarks  on  a  crime  spree  up  the 
Hudson  River  valley  in  a  stolen  VW  bus  with  his  girlfriend  (Christina  Ricci)  before  killing  himself  on  his  parents'  doorstep  in 
Brookline,  Massachusetts.  (Hmm,  prequel  possibility:  Crook/me.)  Ordered  up  $2  lunch  special  from  Malay  Fun. 
Faxed  hot  proposal  to  Harvey,  told  him  our  provisional  title  is  MiraMan.  Damn!  Curry 
squid  on  the  iMac. 

FRIDAY  Finally  got  call  from  Steve  Brill's  office.  His  assistant  said  Steve  had 
positions  available,  but  that  in  the  interest  of  accountability  I  would  receive  a 
ten,  notarized  rejection  letter  from  Steve  himself.  In  addition,  the  full  text  of 
both  my  letter  and  his  response  would  be  released  to  the  press,  and  he 
and  Bill  Kovach  would  make  themselves  available  to  reporters  for  com- 
ment on  the  matter.  Cool!  Celebrated  with  $1.95  sate  at  Gorgeous  Thai 
Wonderful  Restaurant. 

SATURDAY  Stayed  in.  Watched  The  Opposite  of  Sex  again  on  pay- 
per-view.  Christina  Ricci  rules!  (Could  be  a  hot  Details  cover.  Re- 
minder: E-mail  Joe  Dolce.)  I'm  totally  over  Janeane  Garofalo. 

SUNDAY  III.  Bad  reaction  to  $1.50  dumplings  purchased  from 
Bad  Dumpling  Express  Shop.  What  the  hell  was  Asimov  thinking? 
Further  bummage  from  my  friend  Caitlin,  who  called  and  told  me 
her  friend  Erica  at  Miramax  says  Harvey  hates  me  because  of  my  Ce- 
lebrity lawsuit.  He'll  get  his,  then!  I've  decided  to  become  a  citizen- 
journalist.  Coming  soon:  my  fearless  gossip  site,  www.thejoshreport.com  . . 


VANITY     FAIR 


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■ 


Aidan  Ouinn,  Jo  Busccmi,  Elizabeth  Ouinn, 
and  Steve  Buscemi  at  Elaine's. 


*:  **mmj4  ujtu^*^ . 


Harry  and  Gigi  Benson 


Ronson  at  Magidson  Fine  Art. 


Linda  Allard,  Herb  Gallon,  and  Cindy  Crawford 
celebrating  SO  years  of  Ellen  Tracy. 


Ryan 
dinner  for 


Liz  Smith  and  a  similarly  dressed 
partygoer  at  '21.' 


The  International  Fair  of 
New  Art  at  the  armory. 


John  Madden 
at  Elaine's. 


Fran  Lebowitz  and  Helen  Marden 
at  the  69th  Regiment  Armory.        « 


MIDWINTER     NIGHT'S     DREAM 

ebruary  was  none  too  soon  for  Harvey  Weinstein  to  start  toasting  Johi 
Madden,  director  of  Shakespeare  in  Love,  which  picked  up  sevej 
■  Oscars,  including  best  picture.  At  Elaine's,  the  British  director  share' 
behind-the-scenes  stories  with  Sidney  Lumet,  Griffin  Dunne,  Charlie  Rose 
Art  Buchwald,  and  Matt  Dillon. 

Meanwhile,  at  New  York's  other  perennially  swell  restaurant,  '21,'  Li 

Smith,  Arnold  Scaasi,  and  Parker  Ladd  did  their  part  for  literature  by  hos 

ing  the  25th  anniversary  Literacy  Partners  benefit.  Among  the  1 00  guest 

lending  support  to  the  adult-literacy  program  were  Louise  Grunwald,  Jor 

Evans,  and  Ahmet  Ertegun.  The  opening  at  Magidson  Fine  Art  for  Harr 

Benson's  exhibition  of  Beatles  photographs  (in  conjunction  with  his  nev 

book,  The  Beatles  Now  and  Then)  provided  a  little  nostalgia  for  Lesle' 

Stahl,  Howard  Stringer,  and  Anthony  Haden-Guest  as  well  as  for  menr 

bers  of  the  next  generation's  social  set,  including  Stephai 

and  Lulu  de  Kwiatkowski  and  Shoshonna  Lonstein.  Else 

where  in  the  world  of  tastemakers,  75  art  galleries  fron 

around  the  globe  took  their  stations  at  the  first  Internatior 

al  Fair  of  New  Art,  held  at  the  69th  Regiment  Armory 

which  featured  works  by  Ellsworth  Kelly,  Damien  Hirst 

and  Louise  Bourgeois.  Linda  Allard,  designer  for  Ellei 

Tracy  since  1 964,  celebrated  50  years  of  the  fashion  lin< 

i    at  Vanderbilt  Hall  in  Grand  Central  Terminal  with  60C 

revelers,  including  Cindy  Crawford  and  Geraldine  Fer 

raro.  Finally,  200  well-wishers  slipped  into  Joe's  Pub  a 

the  Public  Theater  to  join  GQ  editor  in  chief  Art  Cooper  ir 

raising  a  glass  to  writer-at-large  James  Ellroy  on  the  publi 

cation  of  his  new  book,  Crime  Wave.         — EVGENIA  PERET; 


"safer 


James  Ellroy  and  Art  Cooper 
at  Joe's  Pub. 


•'''■•^    ^^ 


H&&, 


±j_ 


A  tribute  in  rhyme  to  America's 
storied  can i ne  competition 


For  top  dogs  everywhere,  all  roads  lead  to  Madison  Square 
Garden,  site  of  the  Westminster  Kennel  Club's  imperious, 
enviable  annual  dog  show— at  123  years  old,  it's  the  second- 
oldest  continuous  sporting  event  in  America  (the  Kentucky 
Derby  is  20  months  older).  Amid  this  year's  convergence  of  canine 
creme  de  la  creme,  laura  Jacobs  reports  on  the  dogs  in  doggerel. 

It's  haute  couture— with  kibble. 
The  Academy  Awards— with  nibbles 
of  uncooked  Oscar  Mayer  wieners 
(can't  eat  gold  statuettes!). 
It's  the  canine  show  of  shows  (and  cold  noses), 
Manhattan's  annual  dog-run-for-the-roses: 
the  Westminster  Kennel  Club  Champions  Only. 
And  yet, 
for  those  in  the  know,  this  dog  show's  called 
The  Garden." 


It  starts  with  Iris  Love  and  Liz  Smith's 
kickoff  bash, 


VANITY     FAIR 


^^^^^   A  star  poodle  preens 
for  the  Westminster 
■  ^      pup-arazzi,  with  some 
encouragement  from  a 
toy-toting  handler.  Below,  a  nimble 
Afghan  trots  with  its  equally 
nimble  walker. 


"crown  jewel"  of  Westminster's  social  scene, 
uncrashable  at  Tavern  on  the  Green. 
Here  silvered  deans  and  pedigreed  elite 
share  doggy  erudition  and  all-you- 

can-eat. 
Indeed,  Love's  Tyche  Tyche, 

a  dachshund  and  co-hostess, 
commits  a  small  "faux  paw"  and  eats  the  mostess— 
she  hoovers  half  the  pate  from  its  plate! 
(And  dachshunds  really  need  to  watch  their  weight.) 
As  for  the  dish  on  who'll  win  Best  in  Show: 
"This  year,  unclear." 

Some  pick  the  poodle  (white,  he's  bubbles  in  the  snow). 

The  Gordon  and  the  Doberman  are  great. 

Still,  the  Steiff-like  Lakeland  could  be 

7/      s^_  _  ^  destiny's  date. 

Monday,  nine  A.M. 
Bedlam  at  the  benches  and  backstage. 

CONTINUED    ON    P  A  G 1      I  4  A 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


HILARY     KNIGHT 


MAY      1999 


he  Bombay  Sapphire  Martini.  As 


POUR  SOME 


I)     I    HUM     I'  \(, 


lin  i  teotgi  John  II  'anna  51 

judgt  i  tin  tcbipperkes  (while  thi  \  judgi 

their  handler  j  liver  treat),  Left, 

;//wi;  lover  admin  i  //«  real  thing 


flunk  supermodels  dressing  u>  wage  war 
(then  resting  in  a  private  cage). 
We're  talking  2,500  competitors 
Ben-Hurs  in  furs! 
Pomaded  pugs  and 

pointers  Porizkova'd, 
Bedlingtons  both  trimmed 

and  Turlington'd. 
Shining  shepherds, 
Schiffer'd  schnauzers, 
the  Afghan's  llower-power  trousers. 
And  while  Maltese  must  sport  a  baby  bow, 
the  boxer's  suavely  Savile  Row. 
Alas  poor  Yorkie,  breed  of  infinite  wit 
stand  or  sit  he  looks  like  Cousin  It  (Shih  Tzu  does,  too) 
All  kowtow  to  the  groomers'  voodoo 
and  their  eagle  eye  for  doo-doo. 

Now,  who's  who? 

Martha  Stewart's  rooting  for  her  Chow  Chow, 

Paw  Paw— 
he  makes  the  first  cut:  Hurrah  (it's  a  good  thing).  Hurrah. 
Bill  Cosby 's  Just  in  Thyme,  a  Welsh  terrier, 
takes  Best  of  Breed  with  flare  to  spare 
and  then  takes  Best  of  Group. 
Tyche  Tyche  stays  home,  pate-poops; 
her  nephew  Diomedes  takes  the  "blue"  (see  Iris  cry  and  coo). 
Amid  the  corgi  hive,  it's  Greg  Louganis  of  the  golden  dive. 
And  eyeing  borzois,  "The  Bride  of  Wildenstein" 
alive 
and  in  the  pink,  her  kitty  Karma  camouflaged 
in  mink. 

Now  let's  be  candid  about  canids: 
they're  very  nice. 
It's  Homo  sapiens  that  make  you  look, 
think,  twice. 

In  these  two  days  the  only  nasty  nips 
were  gripes  and  growls  unleashed  from 
human  lips- 
fellow  fanciers  shooting  from  their 
hips  up  in  the  seats. 
As  for  the  handlers,  a  unique 

species, 
they  seem  to  have  a  deal  with  the 
dogs:  Attention  =  Eats. 
Watch  out  for  flying  liver  treats! 
The  judges,  on  the  other  hand- 
like  orchestra  conductors  sans 
batons— are  mandarin. 


A  finalist  Chihuahua 

stands  at  attention  for  judge 

William  J.  Dolan. 


A  nod,  a  look,  a  finger  crook. 

Did  Rover  win?  Or  did  he  get  the  hook? 

Tuesday,  10:20  p.m. 

You  can  cut  the  tension  with  a  flea  comb. 

Four  million  people  watch  this  round  from  home: 

it's  Best  in  Show— pooch  heaven  till  11. 

Make  way,  here  come  this  year's  Magnificent 

Seven! 
Cute  as  a  Cosby  sweater,  there's  Just  in  Thyme. 
The  Gordon  setter,  a  gleaming,  auburn  rhyme 
with  Gable's  "Rhett,"  is  grand  romance. 
The  poodle's  Mr.  Darcy  at 

the  dance. 
Oh,  the  German  shepherd's 

Schwarzenegger  grace. 
The  Bernese  mountain  dog's 

sweet  face. 
And  what  about  that  ice-queen 

blonde  saluki, 
dogdom's  Garbo,  Sharon  Stone? 
She  seems  to  beam,  "I  vant  to  be 

alone." 
But  look  out  for  the  littlest  gun, 

the  pun,  the  papillon. 
Loteki  Supernatural  Being  takes  in 

the  arena,  seeing  all — 
and  none.  Six  pounds,  pure  light, 
a  whimsy  from  the  quill  of 

Hilary  Knight— 
Voila!  Done. 
The  Garden's  tiny  butterfly  has  won. 


Best  in  Show: 

proud  papillon 

Kirby  (Loteki 

Supernatural  Being) 

struts  his  stuff. 


MAY      19  9  9 


Women  smoke  our  Cohibas. 
Driue  our  Harleys.  Drink 
our  Glenlivet.  Perhaps  women 
could  keep  their  hands  to 
themselves. 


The  size  of  the  Portuguese  Chrono-Rattrapante 

limits  it  to  a  confident  wrist.  A  mechanical 

chronograph  with  a  sweep  hand  measures 

intermediate  elapsed  time  or  a  second  time  cycle. 

Ref.  3712,  in  18  carat  rose  gold,  $  15,000.- 

Also  available  in  stainless  steel  or  platinum. 


IWC 


Since  1868. 
And  for  as  long  as  there  are  men. 


GEARYS 

OF   BEVERLY    HILLS 
351  NO.  BEVERLY  OR.  •  BEVERLY  HILLS  •  (310)  273-4741  •  (800)  793-6670 


Natalie  Portman  for  president?  The  veteran 

actors  and  directors  who  have  worked  with  Portman  since 

her  explosive  screen  debut  at  age  11  in  The  Professional  pay  the  sky's  the  limit 

for  the  fragile-looking,  heartbreakingly  talented  17-year-old. 

She  will  follow  up  her  latest  role,  as  Queen  Amidala  in  this  month's  Star  Wars  prequ< 

with  the  lead  in  the  film  version  of  Mona  Simpson's  Anywhere  but  Here  this  fall. 

But  Portman 's  world  is  more  than  Stardust  glamour, 

LESLIE  BENNETTS  reports — it's  also  a  matter  of  advanced-placement 

calculus,  Harvard  vs.  Yale,  and  finding  out  what  lies  beyond 

Hollywood's  enthusiastic  embrace 


' 


BY    ANNIE     LEIBOVITZ 


6Y    NICOLETTA     SANTORO 


-•*  - 


- 


BABt;  IN 
II IK  WOODS 


Natalie  Portman 

photographed  at 

Dicksonia  Plantation  in 

l.owndesboro,  Alabama, 

on  February  7.  1999. 

The  actress  has  been 

compared  to  the  >oun« 

Andre)  Hepburn. 


buzzer 


sounds,  the  discussion  of  arterial  blood 
flow  in  advanced-placement  biology  ends 
abruptly,  and  the  room  empties  out  fast. 
The  corridors  are  teeming  with  noisy  high- 
school  students  changing  classes,  including 
some  busty  suburban  Lolitas  in  skintight 
sweaters  and  diamond  studs,  wearing  full 
makeup  and  flinging  their  long  hair  around 
like  weapons.  If  anyone  challenged  you  to 
identify  the  movie  star  in  their  midst,  you'd 
never  pick  out  Natalie  Portman. 

As  she  heads  for  her  Japanese  class, 
she  virtually  disappears  into  the  crowd: 
small  and  slight,  hugging  her  books  to  her 
chest,  skirting  the  oncoming  hordes  by 
sticking  close  to  the  shelter  of  the  walls. 
She  looks  younger  than  many  of  her  peers, 
and  fragile  as  an  orchid.  While  other  kids 
zip  into  the  parking  lot  in  their  own  cars, 
Portman  doesn't  have  a  driver's  license; 
her  mother  drives  her  to  school  and  picks 
her  up,  making  sure  she  has  her  vegetari- 
an brown-bag  lunch  and  enough  healthy 
extras  to  survive  the  day.  By  10  a.m.,  Port- 
man  is  eating  a  peanut-butter-and-jelly 
sandwich  in  class,  like  a  kindergartner 
who  can't  get  through  the  morning  with- 
out snacktime. 

Who  would  imagine  that  this  girl  made 
her  explosive  screen  debut  at  the  age  of  11 
in  The  Professional,  playing  an  orphan  who 
apprentices  herself  to  a  hit  man  because 
her  only  goal  in  life  is  to  learn  to  blow  peo- 
ple away?  Who  would  guess  that  Portman 
has  gone  head-to-head  with  the  likes  of 
Gary  Oldman  and  Jean  Reno  in  The  Pro- 
fessional, Jack  Nicholson  and  Glenn  Close 
in  Mars  Attacks!,  and  Al  Pacino  in  Heat— 
or  that  in  Beautiful  Girls  she  stole  not  only 
her  scenes  but  virtually  the  whole  movie 
from  Tim  Hutton,  Uma  Thurman,  and 
Matt  Dillon?  In  person,  Portman  has  an 
indisputably  lovely  face,  but  she's  not  really 
a  head-tumer.  Put  her  in  front  of  a  camera, 
however,  and  that  face  will  break  your 
heart.  It's  no  wonder  that  Portman— whose 
very  first  movie  had  critics  describing  her 
as  a  "ravishing  little  gamine"— has  already 
been  hailed  as  a  young  Audrey  Hepburn. 

Even  now,  her  skinny  blue-jeaned  legs 
still  betraying  an  awkward  coltishness  and 


VANITY     FAIR 


k 


PRINCESS  CHARMING 


Amid  the  ivy  at 

Dicksonia,  Natalie  Portman 

poses  with  herself.  "1  feel 

like  I'm  having  the  best  of 


V 


■Jj+. 


*'■***? 


Natalie  was  born      ^ 

.     to  do  this.  She's  formidable." 

says  veteran  Broadway  star 

George  Hearri.  * 

•^5 


~\  « v  ~ 


. 


lu'i  porcelain  features  devoid  oi  makeup, 

she  could  pass  as  a  pre-teen.  It's  hard  to 
visualize  her  in  the  carnal  embrace  of 
Darth  Vader,  let  alone  as  the  mothei  of 
Luke  Skywalker  and  Princess  I  eia 
But  soon,  decked  out  in  exotic  makeup 

and  the  fantastical  regalia  of  an  elaborate 
royal  headdress,  Portman  will  be  revealed  as 
Amidala,  the  teen  queen  of  the  planet  Na- 
boo,  in  the  Star  Wars  prequel  The  Phantom 
Menace.  "Tlie  queen  is  strong  and  powerful, 
but  she's  still  14,"  says  George  Lucas,  who's 
directed  the  film.  "I  wanted  somebody  who 
could  be  commanding,  but  who  could  still 
be  young.  I  was  looking  for  somebody  who 
was  smart  and  strong  and  a  terrific  actress, 
and  Natalie  met  all  those  qualifications." 

And  after  the  inevitable  frenzy  of  Star 
Wars  madness  this  spring,  Portman  will 
encore  with  her  starring  role  opposite  Su- 
san Sarandon  in  the  film  version  of  the  ac- 
claimed Mona  Simpson  novel  Anywhere 
but  Here,  which  will  be  released  in  the  fall. 

By  then  Portman  will  have  turned  18 
and  headed  off  to  college.  But  right  now 
she's  still  17,  it's  spring  of  senior  year,  and 
the  conversation  in  the  corridors  of  her 
high  school  tends  toward  the  predictable: 
"Did  you  get  into  Brown?"  "She  didn't  get 
into  Yale!"  While  the  other  seniors  sweat  it 
out,  Portman  has  no  such  worries;  she's  al- 
ready been  accepted  early  at  Harvard  and 
Yale,  and  is  waiting  to  hear  from  several 
other  schools  which  will  no  doubt  clamor 
for  the  honor  of  enrolling  her. 

~~  ost  affluent  subur- 
ban kids  have  a  hard 
enough  time  getting 
their  homework  done, 
let  alone  making  their 
beds  or  raking  the 
lawn.  But  Portman,  in 
addition  to  shooting  a 
shelfful  of  movies,  managed  to  spend  the 
better  part  of  a  year  starring  in  The  Diary  of 
Anne  Frank,  performing  eight  times  a  week 
on  Broadway  while  still  attending  school 
out  on  Long  Island— and  keeping  up  her  99 
grade-point  average  to  boot.  "When  I'm 
really  busy,  I  just  get  so  much  more  done," 
she  says  calmly.  "It  was  really  stressful,  but 
I'm  not  afraid  of  doing  a  lot  of  stuff  now." 
Her  solution  to  the  brutal  schedule  dictat- 
ed by  The  Diary  of  Anne  Frank  was  sim- 
ple: "I  didn't  really  sleep." 

The  play  represented  her  first  Broadway 
outing;  Portman  has  never  had  so  much  as 
an  acting  lesson.  But  even  the  old  pros 
were  impressed.  "When  we  get  vain  about 
what  we're  doing,  it's  always  interesting  to 
see  a  child  who  knows  everything,"  says 
the  veteran  Broadway  star  George  Hearn, 
who  played  Anne's 


"Iwas  looking  lor 
somebody  who  was  smart 
and  strong  and  a  terrific  actress 

and  Natalie  met  all 

those  qualifications,"  says 

George  Lucas. 


I'ONTINUI-.D    ON    PAG  I: 


VANITY     FAIR 


\ 


HEAD  OF  THE  CLASS 

Natalie  Portman  takes  a 
seat  in  the  advanced-placement- 
science  classroom  of 
her  Long  Island  high  school, 
March  7,  1999. 


MR.  DUNNE 
GOES  TO 
WASHINGTON 

Washington  was  not  a  city  DOMINICK  DUNNE  knew  well, 
but  in  covering  President  Clintons  impeachment  trial 
he  stepped  into  a  drama  worthy  of  his  own  fiction.  From 
the  end  of  his  friendship  with  Lucianne  Goldberg— who  in 
1997  had  told  him  the  first  stories  about  a  White  House 
intern— through  a  round  of  Georgetown  dinner  parties,  to 
the  gallery  of  the  U.S.  Senate,  Dunne  finds  echoes  of 
scandals  past  (Martha  Moxley  William  Kennedy  Smith, 
0.  J.  Simpson)  in  the  scandal  that  trumped  them  all,  and 
finally  loses  his  faith  in  the  president  he  once  idealized 


Politics  has  never  been  my  main  topic  of 
conversation,  and  Washington  was  a  city 
I  scarcely  knew  when  I  arrived  there  in 
early  January  to  attend  the  impeachment 
trial  of  President  William  Jefferson  Clin- 
ton. I  was  seated  in  the  periodical  gallery 
of  the  United  States  Senate,  looking  down 
on  100  senators  as  the  House  managers, 
led  by  Henry  Hyde,  presented  their  case 
against  the  president.  Heady  stuff,  watch- 
ing history.  My  feelings  were  passionate, 
at  that  point,  and  my  devotion  to  Bill  Clinton  was  absolute.  Un- 
like Christopher  Hitchens,  another  writer  for  this  magazine,  who 
publicly  despises  Clinton,  I  was  an  ardent  admirer  of  both  the 
president  and  the  First  Lady.  I  felt  a  personal  dedication  to 
them  that  I  refused  to  allow  anyone  to  tamper  with. 


I  admit  that  a  lot  of  my  ardor  had  to  do  with  star  power, 
subject  that  has  always  fascinated  me.  Although  I  have  neve 
had  a  conversation  with  the  president,  I  have  several  time; 
been  up  close  at  hotel-ballroom  events  where  he  was  an  electri 
lying  presence,  the  greatest  I've  ever  seen,  and  I  have  been  ir 
rooms  where  Jack  Kennedy  electrified.  I  started  to  like  him  or 
the  60  Minutes  segment  where  he  denied  that  he  had  had  ar 
affair  with  Gennifer  Flowers.  I  was  impressed  that  he  couk 
withstand  that  kind  of  personal  exposure  on  TV  and  not  fal 
apart.  I  was  at  the  Democratic  convention  in  Madison  Squan 
Garden  in  1992,  waving  a  flag  and  cheering  during  his  accep 
tance  speech.  I  was  in  a  hotel  room  in  Berlin  when  I  watchec 
Clinton's  oration  at  the  funeral  of  Yitzhak  Rabin  in  Israel,  and 
I  wept  at  the  beauty  of  it.  I  was  in  a  hotel  room  in  St.  Peters- 
burg last  June  when  he  gave  his  first  great  speech  in  China, 
and  he  filled  me  with  feelings  of  patriotism,  which  happens  to 


VANITY     FAIR 


ILLUSTRATION     BY     RISKO 


MAY      1999 


■ 


<5hr, 


be  a  great  feeling  that  we  don't  get  often  enough.  As  for  Mrs. 
Clinton,  I've  had  two  conversations  with  her.  The  lirsi  was  in 

1992,  at  a  dinner  party  in  the  apartment  of  Aliee  Mason,  a 
noted  New  York  hostess,  where  Norman  Mailer  sat  next  to  her 
lor  the  first  two  courses  and  I  got  moved  into  the  chair  for 
dessert.  We  talked  the  whole  time  about  Chelsea,  who  was  then 
12,  and  I  could  feel  the  love  she  had  for  her  daughter.  The  oth- 
er time  was  in  the  garden  of  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art  in 
New  York  two  years  ago.  I  was  stunned  that  she  remembered 
me  and  the  conversation  we  had  had.  She  complimented  me 
on  the  articles  I  had  written  about  the  O.  J.  Simpson  trial.  Let 
me  tell  you,  getting  a  compliment  from  the  First  Lady  also  hap- 
pens to  be  a  great  feeling.  I  have  always  looked  on  the  Clintons 
as  two  larger-than-life  characters  in  a  novel  that  I  would  just 
love  to  write. 

Over  the  past  year,  when  people  who  had  felt  as  I  did  about 
the  president  began  to  lose  faith  in  him,  I  remained  stalwart.  I 
knew,  but  I  didn't  want  to  know.  Moreover,  my  dislike  of  Linda 
Tripp  and  Ken  Starr  was  so  extreme  that  it  increased  my  loyalty 
to  him.  I  also  came  to  dislike  Henry  Hyde  and  his  dour,  right- 
wing  band  of  House  managers,  and  the  idea  that  any  of  them 
could  bring  him  down  filled  me  with  loathing. 

The  sex  scandal  had  held  me  captive  from  the  beginning— even 
before  the  beginning,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for  I  had  had  an  insid- 
er's access  all  during  the  initial  stages,  when  I  was  privy  on  a  dai- 
ly basis  to  the  latest  steps  in  the  manipulation  and  betrayal  of 
Monica  Lewinsky  by  Linda  Tripp,  as  stage-managed  by  Lucianne 
Goldberg,  who  used  to  be  a  friend  of  mine.  But  I'll  get  to  that. 


the  Kennedy  sisters,  and  the  one  with  them  in  red  is  teddy's  Wa 

I  Ictoria  That's  Senator  Byrd's  grandson  , . .  That  pretty  bloni 
lady  is  Patricia  Duff,  who  was  recently  divorced  Irani  liana 
Perelman  and  is  going  am  with  Senator  Torricelli  of  New  Jersey. 

After  two  days,  Dee  Dee  went  back  to  California,  where  si 
lives,  and  I  was  on  my  own. 

Being  at  the  State  of  the  Union  speech  was 
thrilling  experience.  The  spectacle  of  the  ju 
tices  of  the  Supreme  Court  walking  in,  followe  t 
by  the  Cabinet,  led  by  Madeleine  Albright  i  if 
turquoise  and  Janet  Reno  in  purple,  was  Ame 
ican  pageantry  at  its  best.  Usually,  for  the  Stal  p 
of  the  Union  speech,  First  Ladies  wear  brigr  if 
colors  for  the  television  cameras,  but  this  year  Mrs.  Clinton  at  I 
peared  in  black,  which  I  thought  made  a  statement  about  he  id 
mood.  All  that  day  her  husband's  impeachment  trial  had  bee  I 
going  on  in  the  Senate,  and  it  would  be  going  on  again  the  ne>  3 
day.  As  she  acknowledged  the  thunderous  standing  ovation  sh  I 
received  when  she  entered  the  gallery,  her  demeanor  was  tha  In 
of  a  gracious  lady  whose  husband  was  in  big  trouble.  She  s^  n 
with  civil-rights  legend  Rosa  Parks  and  baseball  hero  Samm  I 
Sosa,  and  before  the  speech  started  she  chatted  and  laughei  I 
and  appeared  to  be  having  a  wonderful  time,  but  I  felt  restrain  1 
rather  than  joy  coming  from  her. 

The  president's  entrance— greeting  this  one,  reaching  out  I 
laughing,  giving  a  special  hello  to  Democratic  representativ 
Sheila  Jackson  Lee  of  Texas,  who  had  been  so  loyal  to  him  ii  j 


A  large  portion  of  the  Democratic  establishmei 


For  the  first  few  days  in  Washington,  until  I  got  my  bearings, 
I  was  steered  around  by  Dee  Dee  Myers,  a  Vanity  Fair  associ- 
ate, who  had  been  a  White  House  press  secretary  under  Clin- 
ton. She  left  in  1994,  torn  between  affection  and  disappointment 
regarding  the  man  she  had  served,  and  she  was  currently  a  reg- 
ular television  commentator  on  the  Lewinsky  affair,  primarily  for 
Larry  King  Live.  Dee  Dee  knew  everyone  and  saw  to  it  that  I 
met  the  people  I  needed  to  get  to  know  in  the  capital.  "This  is 
Gwen  Ifill  of  NBC  News,"  she'd  say.  Or  "The  blonde  woman  at 
that  table  is  Senate  minority  leader  Tom  Daschle's  wife.  She's  a 
lobbyist."  Or  "This  is  John  Czwartacki.  He's  Trent  Lott's  press 
secretary,  and  he  gives  a  briefing  for  the  media  nearly  every 
day."  Out  of  Czwartacki's  hearing,  she  said,  "The  girls  call  him 
Dreamboat." 

Dee  Dee  arranged  for  us  to  have  lunch  with  California  Dem- 
ocratic senator  Dianne  Feinstein  in  a  Senate  dining  room.  Fein- 
stein  felt  strongly  that  the  president  should  be  punished  but  not 
removed  from  office.  In  the  weeks  to  come,  she  would  sponsor 
a  resolution  to  censure  the  president,  but  it  would  be  derailed 
by  Republican  senator  Phil  Gramm. 

"Would  you  like  to  have  dinner  with  Jamie  Rubin  of  the  State 
Department?"  Dee  Dee  asked.  "He's  Madeleine  Albright's  as- 
sistant, and  he's  married  to  Christiane  Amanpour  of  CNN." 
Sure,  I  said.  We  ordered  ostrich,  at  Jamie's  suggestion.  Right 
from  the  start,  I  had  a  good  time. 

During  the  day,  there  was  always  someone  to  look  at  in  the 
visitors'  gallery,  and  I  was  pretty  good  at  pointing  them  out: 
There  are  Whoopi  Goldberg  and  Frank  Langella  . . .  There  are 


the  House  hearings— was  great  theater.  He  was  his  usual  electri 
fying  self,  as  if  he  didn't  have  a  care  in  the  world,  although  h< 
knew  perfectly  well  that  there  were  many  in  that  chamber  wh( 
hated  his  guts  and  wanted  to  remove  him  from  office.  Th< 
president's  speech  was  great,  and  he  delivered  it  wonderfully 
never  mentioning  his  personal  crisis.  No  one  enjoyed  the 
speech  more  than  Representative  Patrick  Kennedy  of  Rhode 
Island,  Senator  Ted  Kennedy's  son,  who  was  time  and  agair 
the  first  person  on  his  feet  to  lead  the  standing  ovations,  like 
an  old-time  politician. 

It  was  commendable  of  the  president  to  acknowledge  Hillary's 
accomplishments,  but  he  should  have  stopped  his  tribute  there. 
Instead  he  went  on  and  mouthed  "I  love  you"  to  her  for  the  cam- 
era, which,  considering  that  his  adultery  had  brought  on  his  trial, 
came  out  as  spin  rather  than  homage  or  love.  Nevertheless,  that 
evening  of  January  19  was  a  triumphant  one  for  the  Clintons. 

I  was  struck  by  the  courtesy  of  the  majority  of  Republican 
senators  and  House  members,  who  had  the  manners  to  stand 
and  applaud  the  presidency,  even  though  they  thoroughly  dis- 
approved of  the  president.  There  were  exceptions,  the  prime 
one  being  Majority  Whip  Tom  DeLay  of  Texas,  who  had 
steered  the  House  away  from  voting  on  censure,  as  the  Demo- 
crats wanted.  Avoiding  rising,  looking  like  the  C.E.O.  of  a 
small-time  pest-control  company,  which  he  used  to  be,  he 
smirked  and  appeared  supercilious  throughout  the  speech. 
One  week  later,  The  New  Republic  resurrected  allegations  that 
he  had  lied  under  oath  concerning  his  role  and  responsibility 
when  he  was  still  at  the  pest-control  company. 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     19  9  9 


[f  you  have  a  proclivity  for  going  out  every  night,  as  I 
have,  a  cocktail  party  hosted  by  Ben  Bradlee  and  Sally 
Quinn  to  launch  Erik  Tarloff's  entertaining  book,  Face- 
Time,  about  a  presidential  speechwriter  who  finds  out 
that  his  girlfriend  is  having  an  affair  with  the  president, 
was  the  ideal  place  to  be  the  night  after  the  State  of  the 
Union  speech.  Ben  Bradlee  is  the  retired  executive  editor 
'  The  Washington  Post,  and  his  wife  is  a  writer,  hostess,  and  so- 
il force  in  the  city.  I've  known  Sally  Quinn  since  the  70s,  before 
e  married  Bradlee.  It's  interesting  to  watch  someone  you  knew 
irly  on  become  a  person  of  consequence,  and  Sally  was  one  of 
ose  people  you  could  always  tell  were  going  to  be  somebody, 
ever  leaving  the  center  of  the  hallway,  she  greeted  guests  as  they 
[  rived,  introduced  those  who  didn't  know  one  another,  and  said 
>od-bye  to  people  as  they  left,  often  with  a  knowing  laugh  or  a 
mfidential  whisper  or  a  proposal  to  get  together,  as  only  an  ex- 
;rt  hostess  knows  how  to  do.  In  November  1998,  she  had  writ- 
n  a  very  controversial  article  in  Tlie  Washington  Post  about  the 
lationship  between  the  Washington  establishment  and  President 
linton,  and  she  had  taken  a  lot  of  heat  for  it.  What  I  was  to  find 
jt  during  the  five  weeks  of  the  trial  was  that  her  article  was  very 
xurate.  A  large  portion  of  the  Democratic  establishment  had 
»st  all  respect  for  the  president.  Its  members  did  not  want  to  see 
linton  removed  from  office.  They  wanted  him  to  resign  and  turn 
le  office  over  to  Vice  President  Gore,  who  is  part  of  the  Wash- 
lgton  establishment  and  always  has  been. 

Luckily  I  was  acquainted  with  a  number  of  the  players  on  the 
).C.  scene,  and  most  nights  there  were  interesting  dinners  in 


Arkansas— the  managers  turned  out  to  be  not  a  very  effective 
team,  and  certainly  no  match  for  the  superb  team  of  lawyers  rep- 
resenting the  president.  A  reporter  I  know,  who  had  turned 
against  Clinton,  whispered  to  me  in  the  gallery  one  day,  "The 
guy  doesn't  deserve  such  good  lawyers  as  these." 

The  House  managers  kept  trying  to  shock  the  Senate  with  the 
constant  repetition  of  a  story  that  had  long  since  lost  its  shock 
value.  The  TV-talk-show  hosts  and  comedians  had  seen  to  that. 
Most  of  the  managers  couldn't  keep  their  self-righteous  hatred  of 
the  president  from  showing,  and  hatred  is  never  a  good  look. 
Henry  Hyde  tried  to  evoke  the  cheapest  kind  of  patriotism  by 
bringing  up  the  dead  soldiers  beneath  the  white  crosses  in  the 
American  cemetery  in  Normandy,  suggesting  that  the  circum- 
stances behind  the  impeachment  trial  were  not  what  they  had 
fought  for.  As  a  veteran  of  that  war  and  a  friend  of  a  couple  of 
the  soldiers  under  those  white  crosses,  I  was  offended  by  that  ref- 
erence and  glad  when  White  House  counsel  Charles  Ruff  said  in 
reply  that  his  father  had  fought  in  that  war,  but  not  for  either 
side  in  this  case.  I  couldn't  stand  Lindsey  Graham's  folksy, 
down-home,  I'm-just-a-southern-boy  speechifying.  He  said  "ain't" 
a  lot.  I'd  seen  his  mean  streak  show  on  his  face  on  television  dur- 
ing the  House  Judiciary  hearings,  when  he  spoke  about  the  pres- 
ident's planting  the  stalker  story,  his  voice  dripping  with  disgust. 
Even  a  public  outing  of  handholding  on  a  cozy  banquette  at  the 
Palm  restaurant  with  Laura  Ingraham,  the  right-wing  blonde 
pundit  of  MSNBC,  which  was  widely  reported  in  the  gossip 
columns,  didn't  change  his  image.  Bob  Barr  was  another  one  I 
had  trouble  with.  It's  probably  unfair  to  say  this,  but  I  couldn't 


Washington  had  lost  all  respect  for  the  president 


jeorgetown  houses  and  restaurants.  The  conversation  never 
/andered  far  from  the  impeachment  trial.  I  was  reminded  of  Bel 
dr  dinner  parties  during  the  O.  J.  Simpson  trial,  when  people 
liked  of  nothing  but  that  trial  for  the  better  part  of  two  years. 
)ut  there  I  had  been  a  participant  in  the  conversation,  because  I 
/as  familiar  with  the  terrain,  but  in  Georgetown  I  just  listened, 
ecause  it  was  all  new  to  me.  A  couple  of  nights  I  found  myself 
t  the  same  party  with  one  or  two  of  the  three  witnesses  whose 
epositions  were  about  to  be  shown  on  videotape  at  the  trial, 
oth  of  whom  I  knew.  "I  can't  talk  about  it,"  they  would  say, 
ut  then  we'd  talk  around  it.  Sidney  Blumenthal  invited  me  to 
le  White  House  for  a  peek  at  the  Oval  Office  when  the  presi- 
ent  wasn't  going  to  be  there.  Vernon  Jordan  seemed  uncon- 
erned  with  the  ordeal  ahead  of  him,  even  though  his  appear- 
nce  before  the  House  managers  was  only  a  week  away.  "We're 
ot  going  to  talk  about  it,"  he  said,  setting  the  rules  for  the 
vening's  conversation,  and  we  didn't,  but  he  joked  about  wear- 
lg  a  white  suit  and  spats  to  the  deposition. 

From  the  beginning,  there  was  virtually  no  chance  that  the 
resident  would  be  removed  from  office.  People  said  that  if  there 
ad  been  a  secret  ballot— as  there  used  to  be  at  the  Doges' 
'alace  in  Venice— the  outcome  might  have  been  different.  Cer- 
linly  there  were  Democratic  senators  who  wanted  the  president 
)  remove  himself  from  office  and  make  way  for  the  vice  presi- 
ent,  but  nothing  in  the  House  managers'  arguments  was  ever 
kely  to  change  a  single  Democrat's  vote.  Except  for  Asa 
lutchinson,  the  Republican  from  Arkansas— who  shares  a  Vir- 
inia  apartment  with  his  brother,  Senator  Tim  Hutchinson  of 


look  at  him  without  thinking  of  Hustler  publisher  Larry  Flynt's 
accusation  concerning  his  second  wife's  abortion,  which  she  says 
he  paid  for  while  wooing  wife  No.  3.  In  my  notes  of  January  26, 
made  during  a  speech  by  House  manager  Bill  McCollum,  I 
wrote,  "Hardly  any  of  the  Democratic  senators  are  really  listen- 
ing to  him.  Senators  Kennedy  and  Biden,  sitting  next  to  each 
other,  are  carrying  on  a  conversation.  Some  are  reading,  some 
writing.  They've  heard  it  all  before,  over  and  over." 

You  know  you're  at  the  A-list  party  in  town 
whenever  Katharine  Graham,  former  publisher 
of  Tlie  Washington  Post,  walks  into  someone's 
living  room,  exuding  her  special  aura  of  class 
and  power.  "Hi,  Kay,"  everyone  says,  "Hi, 
Kay,"  as  she  heads  for  a  sofa  or  her  place  at 
the  table.  Seated  next  to  her  one  night  at  a 
dinner  in  the  home  of  Margaret  Carlson,  a  columnist  for  Time 
magazine,  who  was  also  covering  the  impeachment  trial,  I  got 
shy  and  could  think  of  nothing  interesting  to  say,  but  Mrs. 
Graham— I  didn't  dare  call  her  Kay— immediately  started  raving 
about  the  cellist  Yo-Yo  Ma,  whose  concert  she  had  attended 
that  afternoon  at  the  Kennedy  Center.  The  guests  were  all  so  in 
that  they  seemed  to  know  everything  before  it  happened.  An- 
drea Mitchell,  the  chief  foreign-affairs  correspondent  for  NBC 
News,  was  on  my  other  side.  She  repeated  a  joke  that  Demo- 
cratic senator  John  Breaux  of  Louisiana  had  told  at  the  Alfalfa 
Club  dinner,  an  annual  Washington  roast:  What  did  President 
Clinton  and  the  Pope  talk  about  in  St.  Louis?  Tlie  Nine  Com- 


AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


mandments.  Andrea  is  married  to  Alan  Greenspan,  the  chaii 

man  of  the  Federal  Reserve,  who  was  sealed  at  (he  oilier  end  OJ 
the  table,  between  Ann  Jordan,  Vernon  Jordan's  wile,  and  the 
hostess.  Vernon  was  on  the  other  side  of  Margaret  Carlson. 
Elsewhere  at  the  table  were  Jim  Lehrer  of  PBS's  NewsHour  and 
his  novelist  wile,  Kate,  and  my  old  friend  George  Stevens  Jr., 
the  son  of  the  great  film  director  George  Stevens,  who  had  left 
Hollywood  in  1962  to  work  at  the  United  States  Information 
Agency  under  President  Kennedy.  He  stayed  on  in  Washington 
and  married  Elizabeth  Guest,  and  he  now  runs  the  Kennedy 
Center  Honors  program,  plays  golf  with  Vernon  Jordan,  and  is 
close  to  the  First  Family.  The  Stevenses  had  had  the  Clintons  to 
early  dinner  at  their  house  the  previous  night  and  then  gone  on 
to  the  Kennedy  Center  to  see  Bernadette  Peters  in  Annie  Get 
Your  Hun,  which  was  trying  out  in  Washington  before  moving  to 
Broadway.  Ann  Jordan  had  been  in  the  party,  as  had  Peter 
Stone,  who  had  revised  the  book  for  the  current  revival  of  the 
musical,  and  his  wife,  Mary.  Their  arrival  at  the  theater  was 
unannounced,  but  George  said  that  in  all  his  years  at  the  Ken- 
nedy Center  he  had  never  heard  an  ovation  as  loud  or  as  long 
as  the  one  the  Clintons  received  when  the  audience  became 
aware  of  their  presence  in  the  presidential  box. 

For  some  reason  the  name  of  the  lawyer  John  Dean,  long 
associated  with  the  Nixon  Watergate  scandal,  came  up.  It  pro- 
vided me  with  the  chance  to  make  my  single  contribution  to 
the  dinner-table  conversation.  Dean  was  currently  back  in  the 
public  eye  as  an  expert  witness  on  impeachment  on  MSNBC.  I 
remembered  that  his  wife's  name  was  Maureen,  or  Mo.  I  asked 


voices  were  distinguishable,  but  the  content  of  the  conversation/ 
wink-  suspicious  in  nature,  was  not  incriminating.  There  was  oq 
a  .1  hook.  Marriott  dropped  out  of  sight,  but  Lucianne  and  I  li 
it  oil  and  became  friends.  We  enjoyed  each  other's  company.  I 
my  1997  novel,  Another  City.  Not  My  Own,  in  which  I  based  th 
character  Gus  Bailey  on  myself,  I  wrote  on  page  12: 

Gus  had  a  friend  named  Lucianne  Goldberg,  whom  he  relcrre( 
to  as  his  "telephone  friend."  They  saw  each  other  only  a  eoupl 
of  times  a  year,  but  they  talked  every  day,  usually  after  they  ha< 
read  all  the  morning  papers,  and  hashed  over  the  news.  Lik 
Gus,  Lucianne  was  a  newspaper  junkie.  Like  Gus,  she  had  con 
tacts  in  high  places.  Like  Gus,  she  was  a  font  of  daily  informa 
tion. . . .  They  saw  things  the  same  way,  although  she  had  consid 
erably  less  tolerance  for  President  Clinton  than  Gus  did. 

Lucianne's  feelings  about  Bill  Clinton  didn't  bother  me 
since  all  my  Republican  friends  disliked  him,  but  I  remainec 
steadfast  in  my  own  convictions.  On  the  day  of  his  seconc 
election— a  cause  of  rejoicing  for  me— Lucianne  said,  "Yoi 
mark  my  words,  he'll  never  finish  out  this  term." 

In  May  1996,  nearly  three  years  after  Vincent  Foster's  su 
cide,  she  told  me  about  a  government  employee  named  Lind< 
Tripp,  who  had  come  to  her  to  suggest  a  book  about  Foster' 
death,  as  well  as  about  goings-on  in  the  Clinton  White  House 
Tripp  had  served  Vince  Foster  his  last  hamburger,  and  she  i 
thought  to  be  one  of  the  last  people  to  have  seen  him  alive.  Lu 
cianne  assigned  a  ghostwriter  to  prepare  a  book  proposal,  but 
then  Tripp  backed  away  from  the  project,  fearful  of  losing  het 


The  day  of  the  election,  Lucianne  said,  "Yoi 


Andrea  Mitchell  if  she  knew  who  had  been  the  ghostwriter  of 
Maureen  Dean's  trashy  novel  Washington  Wives.  "No,"  replied 
Andrea.  "Lucianne  Goldberg,"  I  said.  She  promptly  called  for 
silence  at  the  table.  "Tell  them  what  you  just  told  me,"  she 
said.  I  repeated  my  nugget. 

y  long  friendship  with  Lucianne  Goldberg 
came  to  an  end— not  without  regret— over 
Linda  Tripp's  surreptitious  taping  of  Monica 
Lewinsky.  I  found  it  abhorrent  that  someone 
like  Tripp— "that  paragon  of  faithful  friend- 
ship," as  David  Kendall,  Bill  Clinton's  per- 
sonal lawyer,  called  her— could  destroy  the 
president  of  the  United  States.  Lucianne  and  I  met  in  1985,  dur- 
ing the  second  Claus  von  Biilow  trial  for  the  attempted  murder  of 
his  wife.  Lucianne  was  the  literary  agent  for  a  mysterious  young 
man  named  David  Marriott,  who  was  variously  described  by  the 
press  as  an  undertaker,  a  male  prostitute,  and  a  drug  dealer.  He 
was  also  a  sort  of  forerunner  of  Linda  Tripp.  In  the  August  1985 
issue  of  this  magazine,  I  wrote,  "Marriott  further  revealed  that  he 
had  secreted  a  tape  recorder  in  his  Jockey  shorts  and  taped  von 
Biilow,  [von  Billow's  mistress  Andrea]  Reynolds,  [local  priest]  Fa- 
ther Magaldi,  and  [lawyer]  Alan  Dershowitz  in  compromising 
conversations."  For  nearly  a  week  Marriott  held  sway  in  Provi- 
dence—where the  trial  took  place— granting  interviews,  riding 
around  in  limousines,  being  famous.  There  was  going  to  be  a 
book.  I  remember  hearing  the  tapes,  whose  sound  quality  was 
what  you  would  expect,  given  the  location  of  the  recorder.  The 


job.  More  than  a  year  later,  Lucianne  asked  me,  "Do  you  re- 
member a  woman  I  told  you  about  called  Linda  Tripp?"  I 
remembered  only  that  she  had  served  Vince  Foster  his  last 
hamburger.  She  was  back  with  a  new  story,  concerning  a  very 
young  intern  in  the  White  House  who  was  having  an  affair  with 
the  president.  Although  I  have  subsequently  heard  Goldberg 
deny  this  on  television,  it  was  my  understanding  that  Tripp's  sec- 
ond visit  was  about  another  book.  For  some  reason,  I  never  re- 
acted to  the  story  as  I  probably  should  have,  thinking  that  this 
was  going  to  be  just  another  book  like  Gary  Aldrich's,  about 
the  president's  sexual  escapades,  gossip  with  no  proof,  the  kind 
of  cheesy  book  that  makes  a  splash  and  is  quickly  forgotten.  I 
remember  saying  something  totally  inadequate,  like  "Wouldn't 
you  think  he'd  be  more  careful,  with  Paula  Jones  breathing 
down  his  neck?"  I  never  really  believed  the  story.  That  it  might 
lead  to  the  impeachment  of  the  president  never  occurred  to  me. 
I  began  to  get  almost  daily  bulletins  about  the  affair.  I  learned 
how  brokenhearted  the  young  woman  was.  I  heard  about  the  se- 
men stain  on  the  dress.  It  was  such  a  tawdry  story  that  it  seemed 
too  improbable  to  credit.  Then  I  heard  that  Linda  Tripp  was  tap- 
ing her  telephone  calls  with  the  young  woman,  without  her 
knowledge.  That  was  the  first  time  I  reacted.  "Isn't  that  illegal?' 
I  asked.  I  began  to  listen  to  Goldberg's  retelling  of  Tripp's  stories 
in  a  different  way,  but  I  did  not  keep  records,  still  not  picking  up 
on  the  fact  that  a  historic  moment  was  happening  in  front  of  me. 
Lucianne  had  bought  her  son  Jonah  an  apartment  in  Washing- 
ton, and  it  was  there,  she  would  tell  me,  that  she  met  with  Linda 
Tripp  and  Mike  Isikoff  of  Newsweek  magazine. 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     1999 


In  November  1997,  I  was  having  lunch  at  the  Four  Seasons 
Btaurant  in  New  York.  Across  the  room  I  saw  Vernon  Jordan, 
th  whom  I  was  acquainted.  As  he  left  the  restaurant,  he  stopped 
•  my  table.  Knowing  of  his  closeness  with  Clinton,  I  decided  to 
irn  him  that  an  intern  of  the  president's  was  being  taped.  I  didn't 
;1  that  I  needed  to  go  into  sordid  details;  I  would  just  tell  him 
e  basic  facts.  But  the  story  suddenly  seemed  so  utterly  absurd 
at  I  choked.  I  thought  that  no  one  could  be  such  a  goddamned 
ol  as  to  have  an  affair  with  a  twentysomething  intern  in  the  Oval 
ffice  and  ejaculate  on  her  dress  while  being  investigated  by  Judge 
arr,  so  I  simply  mumbled,  "Give  my  best  to  the  president." 
At  one  point  Lucianne  told  me,  "Ken  Starr  has  put  a  wire  on 
nda."  By  then  I  was  deeply  bothered  by  the  story,  but  I  didn't 
•  iow  what  to  do  with  the  information.  I  knew  of  three  other  peo- 
e  who  were  hearing  these  same  things  from  Lucianne.  Because  of 
y  friendship  with  her,  this  was  not  a  story  I  could  run  with.  How- 
-er,  since  I  move  in  media  circles,  I  began  to  tell  it  at  parties  in  the 
jpe  that  someone  would  pick  up  on  it.  I  was  chastised  by  Ahmet 
rtegun  for  using  the  word  "cum"  instead  of  "semen"  when  I  told 
e  story  at  a  dinner  at  Henry  and  Louise  Grunwald's  apartment  in 
ew  York,  and  I  remember  calling  the  next  morning  to  apologize 
'  Louise  for  my  trashy  mouth— but  that's  the  kind  of  story  this  is. 
On  January  21,  1998,  the  Monica  Lewinsky  story  broke.  I 
as  in  Paris  working  on  an  article,  and  I  watched  Lucianne  on 
levision  talking  to  reporters  in  front  of  her  West  Side  apart- 
lent  building,  saying  that  she  had  told  Tripp  how  to  tape 
ewinsky's  calls,  and  that  the  resulting  tapes  had  been  given 
)  Ken  Starr.  I  kicked  myself  around  the  block.  Lucianne  be- 


ry,  and  I  heard  her  tell  the  Today  show's  Matt  Lauer  that  Linda 
Tripp  was  a  patriot.  She  was  unrecognizable  to  me  as  the  friend  I 
used  to  know.  We  used  to  laugh  about  Marv  Albert's  toupee  and 
the  lady  in  the  hotel  room  who  pulled  it  off.  We  used  to  do  num- 
bers on  Johnnie  Cochran  and  Bob  Shapiro  during  the  O.  J.  Simp- 
son trial.  But  I  didn't  know  her  anymore. 

You  can't  touch  me.  You  don't  know  who  the  fuck  I  am. 

—Ryan  Michael  Tripp,  23-year-old  son  of  Linda  Tripp, 

to  a  police  officer  outside  the  Santa  Fe  Cafe  in 

College  Park,  Maryland,  before  being  arrested  and 

charged  with  disorderly  conduct,  disturbing  the  peace, 

and  obstructing  and  hindering  justice. 


4 


S  "V  h,  here  comes  your  friend  Eunice  Shriver,"  said 
*  m  ^   Maureen  Orth,  my  fellow  writer  on  this  maga- 

■  B  zine,  as  we  stood  in  the  elegant  drawing  room  of 

3  M  Smith  and  Elizabeth  Bagley's  house  in  George- 

M  V  town  and  watched  the  other  guests  arrive  for 

^^  W   dinner.  There's  Senator  Barbara  Boxer  of  Califor- 

^^_^^  nia  . . .  There's  Congressman  Dingell  of  Michigan 
. . .  There's  Congresswoman  Loretta  Sanchez,  who  just  defeated 
Bob  Dornan  in  California  . . .  You  must  see  the  indoor  swimming 
pool— it's  divine.  That  night  I  was  standing  in  for  Maureen's  hus- 
band, Tim  Russert,  who  was  on  NBC  talking  about  the  impeach- 
ment and  Monica,  which  is  what  we  were  all  going  to  be  talking 
about  at  dinner.  Smith  Bagley,  an  heir  to  the  Reynolds  tobacco 
fortune,  is  a  major  contributor  to  the  Democratic  Party.  The  oc- 


iark  my  words,  he  11  never  finish  out  this  terra ' 


ame  a  national  celebrity.  The  New  York  Times  reported  that  I 
/as  her  friend,  and  I  was  asked  to  go  on  chat  shows  to  discuss 
er,  but  I  declined.  Our  phone  conversations  became  stilted. 

I  had  another  connection  with  her:  Mark  Fuhrman,  the  contro- 
ersial  detective  from  the  O.  J.  Simpson  trial,  who  had  written  a 
est-seller  about  that  case  called  Murder  in  Brentwood.  Lucianne 
joldberg  was  his  literary  agent.  She  was  looking  for  an  unsolved 
lurder  for  Fuhrman  to  write  about.  I  had  received  relevant  infor- 
lation  about  the  1975  murder  of  Martha  Moxley  in  Greenwich, 
'onnecticut,  in  which  Tommy  and  Michael  Skakel,  nephews  of 
ithel  Skakel  Kennedy's,  would  become  the  main  suspects.  Since  I 
ad  already  written  about  that  case  in  my  novel  A  Season  in  Purga- 
->ry,  I  gave  the  information  to  Lucianne,  who  gave  it  to  Fuhrman, 
/ho  developed  it  into  a  successful  book,  Murder  in  Greenwich. 

In  August  1998,  I  gave  a  lecture  at  the  Hampton  Library  in 
tridgehampton,  Long  Island,  in  which  I  tied  the  two  stories— 
/[onica  Lewinsky  and  the  Skakels— together,  with  Lucianne  being 
le  link  to  both.  A  few  days  later,  an  item  about  my  lecture  ap- 
peared in  Neal  Travis's  column  in  the  New  York  Post,  saying  how 
had  almost  told  Vernon  Jordan  the  story.  Soon  after  that,  I  re- 
eived  identical  handwritten  faxes  at  my  New  York  apartment  and 
ly  Connecticut  home,  saying,  "You  are  playing  with  fire,  Nick.  I 
m  going  to  have  to  answer  this  very  publically.  Lucianne."  I 
ixed  back  that  I  hadn't  dissed  her  in  my  Bridgehampton  lecture, 
said  that  I  had  merely  told  about  what  was  happening  in  my 
fe,  and  that  Linda  Tripp  and  the  Moxley  murder  were  both  con- 
ected  to  her.  We  have  not  spoken  since.  I  have  watched  her  on 
Revision,  with  Larry  King,  Chris  Matthews,  or  John  Hockenber- 


casion  was  a  dinner  for  former  ambassador  to  the  United  Nations 
Bill  Richardson  and  his  wife,  Barbara.  Richardson  is  now  secre- 
tary of  energy  in  Clinton's  Cabinet,  and  is  being  talked  of  as  a 
possible  running  mate  with  Al  Gore  in  the  2000  presidential  race. 

"Why?  Is  there  a  problem?"  asked  our  hostess,  the  Honorable 
Elizabeth  Bagley,  President  Clinton's  ambassador  to  Portugal  for 
three  years.  Maureen's  tone  had  suggested  that  there  might  be. 

The  Kennedys  always  seem  to  bristle  when  I  come  within 
their  sight  lines,  ever  since  I  covered  the  William  Kennedy 
Smith  rape  trial  in  West  Palm  Beach  for  Vanity  Fair  and  then 
wrote  A  Season  in  Purgatory,  based  on  the  murder  of  Martha 
Moxley,  a  case  that  has  been  before  a  grand  jury  in  Connecticut 
this  year,  owing  in  some  measure  to  my  efforts.  The  day  before. 
Senator  Kennedy  had  huffed  by  me  in  a  hall  in  the  Capitol. 
They  do  not  hold  me  in  high  esteem,  even  Pat,  with  whom  I 
used  to  be  friends  years  ago,  when  she  was  married  to  Peter 
Lawford  and  we  were  neighbors  on  the  beach  in  Santa  Monica. 

I  had  seen  Pat  with  Eunice  Shriver  in  the  gallery  of  the  Sen- 
ate the  day  before.  They  were  fascinating  to  observe  as  they 
watched  and  listened  intently  to  House  manager  Lindsey 
Graham,  sometimes  leaning  forward,  sometimes  whispering  to 
each  other,  their  faces  etched  with  the  sorrows  they  have  borne. 
I  was  struck  by  the  American  history  bound  up  in  these  two 
ladies— sisters  of  an  assassinated  president,  sisters  of  an  assassi- 
nated presidential  candidate,  sisters  of  a  senator  sitting  below 
them  as  a  participant  in  the  impeachment.  Awesome,  really. 

I've  been  to  enough  dinner  parties  in  my  day  to  recognize  the 
flurry  of  covert  activity  involved  in  the  contini  ed  on  pa 


AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Crewman  Martv  Ma 


December  27,  1998.  Th 
boats,  such  as  Nokia  and  Sayoi 
slipped  through  before  the  worst 
of  the  storm  hit. 


/ 


/hen  115  sailboats  left  Sydney  Harbour 

on  Saturday,  December  26,  for  the  54th  Sydney- 

Hobart  yacht  race,  the  sun  was  shining 

and  software  tycoon  Larry  Ellison  s  80-foot 

onara  was  favored  to  win.  By  Monday  morning, 

had  unleashed  its  full  fury,  seven  boats  had 

n  shattered  by  waves  that  topped  80  feet, 

and  six  sailors  were  dead.  From  survivors, 

iielicopter  crews,  and  the  men  in  the  Australian 

Maritime  Safety  Authority's  "war  room," 

BRYAN  BURROUGH  reconstructs  a 

savage  maelstrom — the  Mayday  calls 

ind  splintered  masts,  the  daring  rescue 

operations,  and  the  tragi 


4  u 


t'a-s^sfflsas- 


SAIL  AWAY 

Shortly  after  the  one  p.m. 

beginning  of  the  Sydney-Hobart 

race,  Sydney  Harbour, 

December  26,  1998.  It  was  a 

fair  start  on  a  glorious  day. 

Few  worried  about  the  routine 

gale  warning  issued  four 

hours  earlier. 


ooom! 

The  little  black-powder  cannon's  power- 
ful report,  signaling  five  minutes  till  the 
start  of  the  race,  could  barely  be  heard 
over  the  cacophonous  chopping  of  heli- 
copters hovering  above  the  sailboats  in  Syd- 
ney Harbour.  It  was  a  glorious,  sun-washed 
Saturday  afternoon,  the  December  26  Box- 
ing Day  holiday  in  Australia,  and  all  around 
the  harbor— from  the  black-wire  uprights 
of  the  Sydney  Harbour  Bridge,  which  lo- 
cals call  "the  Coat  Hanger,"  to  the  scal- 
loped hood  of  the  famed  opera  house,  to 
the  multimillion-dollar  mansions  blanket- 
ing the  hillsides  above  Rushcutters  Bay- 


more  than  300,000  people  had 
gathered  to  watch  the  start  of  this,  the 
54th  Sydney-to-Hobart  yacht  race,  one  of 
the  three  jewels  in  the  crown  of  interna- 
tional ocean  sailing. 

As  they  inched  toward  the  starting  line, 
out  by  Shark  Island,  the  115  boats  ap- 
peared from  the  air  to  be  a  swarm  of  vi- 
brating gypsy  moths.  Down  on  the  water, 
chaos  reigned.  Officials  of  the  Cruising 
Yacht  Club  of  Australia  had  elected  to 
kick  off  the  630-mile  run  down  the  coast 
of  New  South  Wales  to  Tasmania  by  start- 
ing all  sizes  of  boats  at  once— which  is  not 
how  it's  done  with  many  other  ocean  races. 
This  irked  Larry  Ellison,  who  surveyed 
the  scene  from  the  cockpit  of  his  gargantu- 
an, 80-foot-long  Sayonara,  hands  down  the 
world's  fastest  and  most  advanced  racing 
yacht;  Sayonara  was  so  vast  that  Ellison 
had  hired  the  cream  of  New  Zealand's  na- 
tional racing  team  to  crew  it  for  him.  Elli- 
son, who  as  the  playboy  chairman  of  the 
American  software  giant  Oracle  Corpora- 
tion is  worth  more  than  $7  billion,  was 
the  odds-on  favorite  to  win  the  multi-day 
race,  barring  a  collision  or  other  unfore- 
seen disaster.  And  that  was  what  bothered 
him.  Looming  over  the  40-  and  50-foot 


boats  clogging  the  starting 
line,  Sayonara  was  a  great  white  shark 
hemmed  in  by  dozens  of  pesky  pilot  fish. 

Ellison  had  mixed  feelings  about  the 
race.  His  arch-rival,  the  German  software 
magnate  Hasso  Plattner,  had  kept  his 
yacht,  Morning  Glory,  out  of  the  race, 
which  took  some  of  the  fun  out  of  things; 
now  Ellison  could  only  hope  to  beat  Morn- 
ing Glory's  race  record  (set  in  1996),  not 
the  boat  itself.  His  girlfriend,  who  had 
flown  into  Sydney  with  Ellison  on  his 
Gulfstream  V  jet  the  previous  Thursday, 
had  begged  him  not  to  go.  Everyone  knew 
the  Sydney-Hobart  was  a  rough  race; 
Bass  Strait,  the  shallow  channel  that  sepa- 
rates Tasmania  from  the  Australian  main- 
land, is  a  notoriously  treacherous  swath 
of  ocean,  renowned  for  its  steep  waves 
and  unpredictable  storms.  In  his  only 
other  Hobart  race,  in  1995,  Ellison  had 
brought  along  News  Corp.  chairman  Ru- 
pert Murdoch,  who  promptly  lost  a 
fingertip  to  a  screaming  rope  in  Sydney 
Harbour.  This  year  Ellison  had  invited 
Murdoch's  reserved  27-year-old  son,  Lach- 
lan,  a  rising  star  in  his  father's  media  em- 
pire, to  come  along.  "Lachlan  came  with 
us,"  Ellison  said,  "because  his  father  ran 
out  of  fingertips." 

Ellison  ignored  his  girlfriend's  warnings 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY      19  9  9 


"Those  poor 
people  are  heading 
into  a  massacre,1' 

said  forecaster 

Kenn  Batt 
i  After  a  moment  he 
began  to  cry. 


about  the  race,  he  said,  because 
he  wanted  to  see  how  good  a 
sailor  he  had  become.  At  52,  the 
lean,  garrulous  executive  was 
popular  with  his  crew,  but  like 
>  most  rich  yachtsmen,  he  was 
nowhere  near  their  equal  on 
the  ocean.  After  1995  he  had 
frankly  grown  leery  of  the 
Hobart.  "The  Sydney-Hobart 
is  a  little  like  childbirth,"  Elli- 
on  liked  to  say.  "It  takes  a  while  to  sup- 
>ress  the  pain,  and  then  you're  ready  to 
lo  it  again."  Like  Ellison,  many  of  the 
rther  captains  in  the  harbor  that  after- 
10  on  were  wealthy  men,  some  out  to 
)rove  their  manhood,  others  just  hoping 
or  a  good  time.  Securely  in  the  latter 
:amp  was  Richard  Winning,  a  bearded 
18-year-old  Sydney  executive  who  ran  his 
amily's  appliance  company.  Two  years 
sarlier  Winning  had  bought  a  vintage 
vooden  yacht  named  Winston  Churchill 
md  poured  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars 
nto  updating  it  with  the  latest  technolo- 
gy. Neither  Winning  nor  any  of  the  eight 
:hums  he  invited  aboard  for  the  race,  how- 
:ver,  had  any  illusions  about  their  inten- 
ions.  "Gentlemen's  ocean  racing— that's 
>ur  game,"  Winning  told  a  Sydney  reporter 
hat  winter. 

Australians  like  to  believe 
theirs  is  a  classless  soci- 
ety, and  indeed,  for  a  na- 
tion where  more  than 
half  the  population  lives 
near  the  ocean,  big-time 
yacht  sailing  has  little  of 
he  snootiness  that  clings  to  the  sport  in 
America  and  the  United  Kingdom.  The 
1,000  or  so  sailors  that  day  came  from 
svery  walk  of  life,  from  the  slim  British 
Olympian  Glyn  Charles  to  schoolgirls  who 


had  won  their  way  aboard 
boats  in  an  essay  contest.  For 
every  Ellison  or  Winning  there 
was  a  bloke  like  43-year-old 
Tony  Mowbray.  Mowbray  was 
a  stout,  balding  laborer  from 
the  coastal  Australian  coal- 
mining town  of  Newcastle, 
and  he  had  mortgaged  his 
modest  house  to  buy  and  out- 
fit a  43-foot  sailboat  he  hoped 
to  take  around  the  world.  He 
had  spent  much  of  his  sav- 
ings, about  $50,000,  on  a 
sparkling  aluminum  mast, 
bright  new  sails,  and  shelves 
of  electronic  equipment  for 
his  boat,  which  he  grandly 
named  Solo  Globe  Challenger. 
For  Mowbray,  the  Hobart  race 
was  a  test  run,  a  chance  to  see  if  his  boat 
was  ready  for  the  big  water.  His  crew  was 
a  collection  of  pals,  several  of  whom 
worked  in  the  mines. 

Like  golf,  sailing  is  run  on  a  handicap 
system,  so  while  everyone  knew  Ellison's 
Sayonara  would  be  first  to  Hobart,  the 
harbor  was  full  of  Australian  captains 
who  thought  they  might  win  the  handi- 
capped race.  Groups  of  friends  from  yacht 
clubs  all  across  the  country,  from  Ade- 
laide, Melbourne,  Brisbane,  Townsville, 
even  as  far  as  Perth,  had  pooled  their 
money  to  prepare  their  boats  and  buy  bus 
tickets  to  Sydney.  The  nine  Tasmanian 
sailors  aboard  the  40 -foot  Business  Post 
Naiad  were  typical.  The  boat's  skipper,  a 
meticulous  51-year-old  plant  manager 
named  Bruce  Guy,  had  won  a  regatta  in 
Bass  Strait  earlier  in  the  year  and  thought 
he  might  have  the  stuff  to  win  a  big  race. 
He  had  gathered  pals  from  across  the  is- 
land's northern  coast— Steve  Walker,  a  sail- 
maker,  Rob  Matthews,  a  public-housing 
inspector,  even  his  back-fence  neighbor,  a 
gentle  locksmith  named  Phil  Skeggs— 
who  had  pitched  in  $500  apiece  to  get  the 
boat  ready. 

As  the  final  seconds  ticked  away  before 
the  one-o'clock  starting  time,  Ellison 
gripped  Sayonara's  wheel  and  mentally 
went  through  the  race's  first  minutes.  It 
would  be  a  difficult  upwind  start,  forcing 
him  to  tack  back  and  forth  several  times 
within  the  narrow  confines  of  the  harbor. 
With  luck  no  one  would  hit  them. 
booom! 

The  little  cannon  rang  out  again,  and 
across  the  water  hundreds  of  men,  and  a 
scattering  of  women,  lunged  forward  on 
their  boats.  There  were  screams  and 
curses  as  some  of  the  lesser  boats  banged 
hulls,  but  for  the  most  part  it  was  a  clean 
start  beneath  a  brilliant  blue  sky.  As  they 


furiously  cranked  their  winches  and  raced 
to  and  fro,  no  one  had  any  idea  that  sev- 
eral of  their  number  would  not  live  to  see 
Monday  morning. 

Just  after  eight  o'clock  on  Sat- 
urday morning,  Peter  Dun- 
da,  a  33-year-old  forecaster 
in  the  Australian  Bureau  of 
Meteorology's  New  South 
Wales  regional  office,  sat  at 
his  low-slung,  L-shaped  desk 
overlooking  the  busy  tracks  of  Sydney's 
Central  Railway  Station,  16  floors  below. 
Before  him,  on  the  wide  screen  of  his 
IBM  workstation,  were  the  latest  satellite 
photos,  taken  the  previous  night,  and  a 
computerized  model  of  the  weekend's 
weather  generated  by  an  NEC  supercom- 
puter at  the  bureau's  headquarters  in  Mel- 
bourne. One  photo  showed  a  giant  cold-air 
mass,  a  fluffy  pancake  of  bright-white 
speckled  clouds,  moving  northeast  along 
the  western  shore  of  Tasmania  toward  Bass 
Strait.  It  was  a  classic  "southerly  buster," 
the  kind  that  had  buffeted  the  last  several 
Sydney-Hobart  races,  a  whirring  system 
of  winds  and  waves  that  regularly  shot  up 
the  coast  of  New  South  Wales.  It  would 
make  for  rough  sailing,  but  nothing  most 
skippers  in  the  fleet  hadn't  encountered 
many  times  before. 

What  interested  Dunda  wasn't  the  front 
itself— forecasters  had  seen  it  coming  all 
week— but  a  development  in  the  comput- 
erized model  on  his  screen,  called  the 
Meso  Limited  Area  Prediction  System 
(laps),  which  generated  weather  maps  at 
three-hour  intervals  over  the  course  of  36 
hours.  In  the  corner  of  his  computer 
screen  the  model  indicated  a  strong  low- 
pressure  system,  a  swirling  knot  of  gray- 
white  cumulus,  forming  by  Sunday  after- 
noon about  400  miles  east  of  Tasmania. 
While  it  looked  as  if  the  low  would  be 
safely  out  of  the  Sydney-Hobart  fleet's 
path,  it  would  mean  higher  winds  along 
the  system's  western  edges. 

At  9:04,  Dunda  issued  what  the  bureau 
called  a  "priority  gale  warning"  to  race  or- 
ganizers, posted  it  on  a  special  Web  site 
for  race  participants,  and  made  it  available 
to  the  bureau's  weather-by-fax  system.  In 
the  warning  he  predicted  winds  of  30  to 
40  knots  off  Australia's  southeast  coast  by 
Sunday  night.  (A  knot  is  about  1.15  miles 
an  hour;  a  40-knot  wind  blows  about  46 
miles  an  hour.)  Down  at  the  yacht  club's 
modern  brick  building  on  the  harbor, 
where  the  bureau  had  set  up  a  booth  to 
hand  out  packets  of  meteorological  charts 
and  predictions,  a  forecaster  named  Kenn 
Batt,  who  had  given  the  fleet's  weather 
briefing  on  Christmas  Eve  wearing  a  jaun- 


«AV     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR  161 


iv  Santa's  cap,  quickly  photocopied  Dun- 
da's  alerl  and  jammed  it  into  his  packets. 

I  hue   hours   later,  as  the  boats  spent 
then  final  hour  m  Sydney  Harbour,  Dunda 
received  his  next  set  of  satel- 
lite  photOS  and   LAPS 
models,   What   he   saw 
took  his  breath  away.  In 
the  year  or  so  since  the 
bureau  had  begun  work- 
ing with  the  new,  detailed 
computer  models,  he  had 
never  encountered  anything 
like  the  picture  that  now  ap- 
peared  on   his  screen.    It 
showed  an  unusually  strong 
low-pressure  system  forming 
not  safely  east  of  Tasmania 
but  at  the  eastern  mouth  of 
Bass  Strait,  directly  in  the 
fleet's  path.  The  system  looked 
like  a  boxer's  left  hook,  a  fore- 
arm of  white  clouds  jutting  from 
the  vast   empty  spaces  of  the 
Southern  Ocean  northeast  into 
the  strait,  its  northern  end  a 
curled  fist  of  thunderheads.  The 
model  predicted  winds  of  30  to  40 
knots  in  the  area  by  nightfall,  rising 
to  55  knots  by  Sunday  afternoon, 
with  gusts  as  high  as  70  knots— more 
than  80  miles  an  hour. 

Dunda's  phone  rang.  It  was  Melbourne. 

"Have  you  seen  this?"  his  counterpart 
there  asked,  the  alarm  clear  in  his  voice. 
"It  certainly  looks  like  a  storm  warning." 

"Yes." 

A  storm  warning  was  highly 
unusual  for  Australia's 
southeast  coast;  the  bu- 
reau had  issued  only  one 
all  year,  on  August  7,  in 
the  depths  of  the  Aus- 
tralian winter.  Still,  at 
1:58,  with  the  fleet  just  clearing  Sydney 
Harbour,  the  Melbourne  office  issued  the 
warning.  Sixteen  minutes  later  Dunda  did 
the  same.  In  it  he  predicted  that  waves  off 
Gabo  Island,  at  the  continent's  southeast- 
ern tip,  would  average  15  to  20  feet  by 
Sunday  afternoon,  with  the  highest  waves 
reaching  perhaps  40  feet. 

Returning  from  the  harbor,  Kenn  Batt, 
who  had  dozens  of  friends  sailing  in  the 
race,  grew  emotional  as  the  enormity  of 
the  situation  sank  in.  "Those  poor  peo- 
ple are  heading  into  a  massacre,"  he 
said,  taking  a  deep  breath.  After  a  mo- 
ment he  walked  out  onto  an  adjoining 
terrace  and  began  to  cry.  Down  at  the 
yacht  club,  a  private  meteorological  con- 
sultant named  Roger  "Clouds"  Badham, 
who  was  supplying  forecasts  to  Sayonara 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


Mike  Marshman  and 

Hayden  Jones  from  the-  41  -foot  VC 

Offshorpjitagd  Aside  at  three  iwi., 

December  27.  Minutes  earlier 

a  wave  resembling  a  tennis 

court  on  end  had  flipped  the  boat, 

slamming  it  facedowjMnto 

the  sea.  Inset,  thew6-foot  Bobsled 

battling  the  waves. 


Pulling  himself  back  on  board,  Simon  Clark 
was  stunned  to  see  a  seven-foot  gash  in  the  cabin; 

the  mast  lay  draped  over  the  side. 


'It  was  an  incredible  moment  of  clarity"  recall 
Larry  Ellison.  "Tl  lal  said,  if  1 1 i v< ^  to  be  a  thou 
years  old,  I II  never  do  it  again.  Never:' 


■i 


A 


J 


and  more  than  a  dozen  other  big  boats, 
looked  over  his  own  new  set  of  computer 
models  in  amazement. 

"Oh,  shit,"  he  said  to  no  one  in  partic- 
ular. "This  is  Armageddon." 

The  entrance  to  Sydney  Har- 
bour is  barely  1,500  yards 
wide,  flanked  by  high  ba- 
salt cliffs.  Shaking  free  its 
lesser  brethren,  Sayonara 
was  the  first  to  burst  through 
the  gap,  followed  immedi- 
ately by  George  Snow's  streaking  Brinda- 
bella.  As  the  yachts  wheeled  to  the  south, 
surfing  by  the  crowds  baking  on  Sydney's 
famed  Bondi  Beach,  a  strong  northeast- 
erly wind  billowed  their  sails.  Aboard  Sa- 
yonara, Ellison  ordered  the  spinnaker 
hoisted,  and  set  a  course  due  south.  A 
spreading  host  of  smaller  boats  helmed 
by  well-known  Aussie  captains  soon  fol- 
lowed, led  by  Martin  James's  Team  Jaguar, 
Rob  Kothe's  Sword  of  Orion,  the  mam- 
moth 70 -footer  Wild  Thing,  and  the 
Queensland  yacht  B-52.  Thanks  to  the 
strong  winds,  by  midafternoon  much  of 
the  fleet  was  on  a  record  pace— with  the 
gentlemen's  boats,  such  as  Richard  Win- 
ning's striking  Winston  Churchill  and  Tony 
Mowbray's  beloved  Solo  Globe  Challenger, 
in  the  rear. 

Few  in  the  fleet  were  alarmed  by  Peter 
Dunda's  storm  warning,  which  was  broad- 
cast at  three  p.m.  by  the  Young  Endeavour,  an 
Australian  Navy  brigantine  whose  radio  was 
staffed  by  race  volunteers.  Sailing  off  Aus- 
tralia means  an  occasional  blow  of  50  knots 
or  more,  especially  in  Bass  Strait,  and  few  in 
the  race  expected  to  finish  without  encoun- 
tering such  winds.  "The  warning  on  Sat- 
urday didn't    CONTINUED  on   PAG1 


Nokia  survives  the 
jrowinj;  storm,  December  27. 
Inset,  Sayonara  sails  down 
the  lasinaniun  coast, 
December  28,  on  its  way 
to  a  first-place  lini 


s 


po  1 1  Hill  I 


Sport  of 
Queens 


omen  will  never  be 


able  to  play  chess  as  well  as  men.  They  are  biologically  pro- 
grammed to  be  distracted  by  the  sound  of  a  baby  crying. 
They  do  not  have  the  necessary  powers  of  concentration. 
Thus  confided  Mikhail  Botvinnik,  world  chess  champion  of 
40  years  ago,  to  a  colleague.  To  be  fair  to  that  dogmatic 
old  Soviet  hero,  he  could  not  have  anticipated  the  Polgar  sis- 
ters, Zsuzsa,  Sofia,  andjudit.  Zsuzsa,  30,  holds  the  women's 
world  title  but  has  beaten  countless  male  grand  masters. 
Sofia,  24,  once  won  a  grand-master  tournament  with  an  as- 
tonishing score  of  eight  wins,  one  draw,  no  losses.  And  Ju- 
dit-well,  Judit,  22,  is  already  ranked  higher  than  all  but  1 7 
of  the  male  grand-master  elite,  has  beaten  chess  legend 
Anatoly  Karpov  in  an  eight-game  match,  and  is  so  much 
stronger  than  all  other  women  that  she  rarely  competes 
against  a  member  of  her  own  sex.  Zsuzsa,  who  is  less  of  a 
purist,  will  be  putting  Botvinnik's  strictures  to  the  test  this 
spring;  she  is  scheduled  to  defend  her  title  (against  Xiejun  of 
China),  having  given  birth  to  her  first  child,  Tom,  in  March. 
To  the  consternation  of  the  chess  world,  or  at  least  the  male 
end  of  it,  Zsuzsa  plans  to  breast-feed  during  the  match.  And, 
yes,  she  admits,  "I  could  be  distracted." 

The  Amazing  Polgars  may  seem  to  give  great  support  to 
those  who  argue  that  intelligence  is  fundamentally  a  genetic 
phenomenon.  But  think  again.  At  an  early  age,  growing  up 
in  Hungary,  all  three  were  taught  chess  intensively  and  ex- 
clusively by  their  father,  Laszlo  Polgar,  an  educational  psy- 
chologist who  believed  that  genius  was  an  acquired  rather 
than  inherited  trait,  and  who  premeditatedly  set  out  to 
demonstrate  his  thesis  through  his  own  children.  This  has  led 
the  current  chess  king,  Gary  Kasparov,  to  describe  the  Pol- 
gars  as  "trained  dogs."  Very  bitchy.  But  do  the  children— 
now  well-balanced  adults— have  regrets  about  having  been 
guinea  pigs?  "Yes,"  Sofia  has  remarked,  with  characteristic 
good  humor.  "If  my  parents  had  chosen  tennis,  I  would  have 
been  really  rich  now."  -DOMINIC  LAW  SON 

PHOTOMONTAGE     BY     HUGH      HALES-TOOKE 


Bricc  VI 
photographed  outsi 
entrance  to  his 
on  the  Lower  Kast 
in  New  York,  Decembi 
1998.  Opposite: 
of  Chinese  Dai 
1993-96  (oil  on  a 
61  in.  bv  I0X 


•l-l^ 


iSRmiRiiRHBRiiH 


his  generation-a  man  who  has  been  inspired  by  the  stones  of  Paris, 

.  e  trees  of  Greece,  and  the  shells  of  Thailand  to  ceaselessly  reinvent  his  art. 

From  Marden  s  60s  stint  with  Robert  Rauschenberg  in  the  druggy, 

ultra-hip  New  York  of  Max's  Kansas  City,  to  the  dramatic  ups  and  downs  of 

his  marriage  to  the  strong-willed  painter  Helen  Harrington  Marden. 

to  his  recent  ecstatic  preoccupation  with  Chinese         Wk 

calligraphy  and  cave  paintings,  JOHN  RICHARDSON  traces 


Instead  <>i  drawing 
wuii  a  conventional  pen  01 
pencil,  Marden  uses  sticks  up  n> 
three  feel  long  which  be  Ikis 
picked  up  <>n  the  street,  and  dips 
them  m  ink  or  paint, 


hibition  of 


Brice  Maiden's  work  of  the  1990s  on  view 
at  the  Dallas  Museum  of  Art  until  April 
25,  then  at  the  Hirshhorn  Museum  in 
Washington,  D.C.,  the  Miami  Art  Muse- 
um, and  the  Carnegie  Museum  of  Art  in 
Pittsburgh  establishes  once  again  that 
this  artist  is  arguably  the  finest  abstract 
painter  of  his  generation. 

At  a  time  when  pundits  were  claiming 
that  painting  was  dead— killed  off  by  cam- 
eras, computers,  laser  beams,  bulldozers, 
and  other  technological  devices  along 
came  Brice  Marden  to  reinvent  this  sup- 
posedly obsolete  medium.  He  has  done  so 
with  such  dexterity  and  authority  that  the 
paint  surface— its  color,  texture,  tonality, 
and  size,  and  the  way  it  absorbs  or  reflects 
light— can  constitute  the  actual  subject  of  a 
work.  In  the  course  of  reinventing  painting, 
Marden  has  been  at  pains  to  keep  beauty, 
a  modernist  bugbear,  at  bay.  If  he  some- 
times fails  to  do  so,  it  is  because  beauty,  or 
what  he  calls  "refinement,"  is  a  by-product 
of  his  painstaking  perfectionism.  His  con- 
cerns go  much,  much  deeper  than  mere 
surface  attraction.  As  his  friend  the  writer 
and  curator  Klaus  Kertess  has  said,  Mar- 
den "has  pushed  his  paint  ...  to  that  edge 
where  matter  meets  myth  and  spirit." 

Marden  would  never  have  been  able  to 
get  where  he  is  and  stay  where  he  is  had 
he  not  been  driven  by  an  adamant  belief 
in  abstraction,  an  addiction  to  very  hard 
work,  a  fiercely  competitive  ego,  and  a 
compulsion  to  stay  ahead  of  the  game. 
This  is  not  the  side  of  his  character  that 
Marden  presents  to  the  world.  He  has 
such  charm,  such  lucid  and  quirky  intelli- 
gence, such  ironic  humor,  and  such  age- 
less, movie-star  looks  it  is  hard  to  believe 
he  is  60— that  one  is  apt  to  overlook  his  in- 
herent toughness.  Marden  comes  across  as 
something  of  a  paragon.  The  elegant  aus- 
terity of  his  style  is  mirrored  in  the  elegant 
austerity  of  his  studio  on  the  Bowery  in 
New  York.  There  are  no  mountains  of  old 
paint  rags,  no  state-of-the-art  technology  to 
be  seen.  Everything  has  its  place.  His  two- 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


M 


f 

• 

in  * 

i 

.dr 

LJi 

Sticks  allow  Marden 

3  work  at  the  same  distance 

from  his  sheet  of 

paper  that  an  observer 

would  adopt. 


4tf« 


z 


y*< 


r\ 


and  three-foot-long  brushes,  which  arc  es- 
sential  to  the  gestural  bravura  of  his  work 

(Maiden  says  lie  paints  with  "Ins  whole 
body  rather  than  just   the  wrist  and  the 

arm"),  are  aligned  in  meticulous  rows,  it 

conies  as  no  surprise  that  his  seemingly 
simple  worktable  is  Ming. 

The  Maidens'  handsome  Federal  house 
in  Greenwich  Village  reflects  the  more 
protean  taste  of  the  artist's  fascinating, 
forthright  wile,  Helen.  From  her  many 
trips  to  India  and  eastern  Asia  she  has 
brought  back  all  manner  of  treasures,  not 
least  a  small  marble  temple,  which  domi- 
nates the  garden.  The  focal  point  of  the 
living  room  is  an  imposing,  marble  Mogul 
bed.  Helen  uses  it  to  show  off  her  collec- 
tion of  antique  lingams  and  other  phallic 
artifacts  of  all  shapes  and  sizes  and  cul- 
tures. Walls  are  hung  with  works  by  Brice 
and  Helen  and  their  painter  friends  as 
well  as  with  photographs  of  the  family  by 
Robert  Mapplethorpe  and  some  wonder- 
ful Tantric  miniatures.  Animals  abound:  a 
shar-pei  that  looks  like  W.  H.  Auden,  and 
various  felines,  among  them  an  exotic  pair 
of  rex  cats,  which  Fran  Lebowitz,  a  close 
friend,  has  christened  Sloan  and  Ketter- 
ing. Helen's  life-enhancing  touch  is  evi- 
dent in  the  mass  of  flowers  she  regularly 
brings  back  from  the  flower  market— lilies, 
jonquils,  paper-whites,  the  more  sweetly 
scented  the  better— which  are  jammed 
into  scores  of  vases  all  over  the  house, 
but  mostly  in  her  huge  kitchen.  Sitting  by 
the  fire  and  talking  about  her  own,  more 
abstract-expressionistic  work  and  her 
children,  she  epitomizes  the  freedom  of 
spirit  of  the  60s.  Friends  recall  how, 
all  those  years  ago  at  Woodstock,  she 
danced  like  a  maenad  as  long  as  the 
music  lasted. 

Brice  Marden  was  born  into 
the  very  heart  of  East  Coast 
Waspdom— Briarcliff  Manor 
in  New  York's  Westchester 
County— to  a  likable  Irish 
mother  and  a  conventional- 
ly distant  father,  a  Prince- 
tonian  banker  who,  according  to  his  son, 
enjoyed  planting  trees  and  building  "beau- 
tiful dry  stone  walls."  (In  an  attempt  to  ex- 
plain his  work  to  his  father,  Marden  cited 
these  walls:  "Everything  has  to  fit  together 
in  order  for  it  to  stand.")  Marden  had 
briefly  contemplated  a  career  in  hotel  man- 
agement or— in  wilder  moments— the  rodeo. 
However,  by  the  time  he  was  20  he  had 
decided  to  be  an  artist  and  enrolled  at 
Boston  University's  School  for  the  Arts.  He 
proved  to  be  so  paint-obsessed  that  he 
would  take  the  gray  sludge  cleaned  from 
the  students'  brushes  and  see  what  he  could 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


oEjEfUibH 


■    W:     MM 

(mm. 

i 

Above:  For  Helen,  1967  (oil  and  wax 
on  canvas,  69  in.  by  36  in.),  is  a  tribute  to 
Marden's  wife,  made  the  year  of  their 
marriage.  The  canvas  is  her  exact  height,  painted 
in  a  wonderful  orificial  pink.  Left,  Marden's 
studio  on  the  Bowery  is  elegantly  austere,  free  of 
any  of  the  usual  mess  and  clutter  associated 
with  painters'  surroundings. 


/  ix 


/ 


f 


\m 


(    ' 


* 


i 


1 


I 


l/A 


. 


"In  77ze  Muses,  I  was  working  with  a  group  of  figures  d 


lg,  the  Peloponnesian  landscape,  Dionysian  madness.11 


» 


# 


e 


do  with  it.  In  1961  he  moved  on  to  the 
School  of  Art  and  Architecture  at  Yale, 
where  many  of  today's  finest  artists  would 
be  his  fellow  students,  among  them  Rich- 
ard Serra,  Robert  Mangold,  Chuck  Close, 
Nancy  Graves,  and  Janet  Fish.  These  fu- 
ture stars  are  said  to  have  learned  almost 
as  much  from  one  another  as  they  did 
from  their  teachers,  one  of  whom  worried, 
presciently,  that  Marden  might  be  paint- 
ing himself  into  a  corner.  He  was,  but  he 
made  a  virtue  of  it. 

While  still  at  Yale,  Marden  married  his 
girlfriend,  a  sister  of  Joan  Baez,  and  fa- 
thered a  son  named  Nicholas.  After  earn- 
ing a  master-of-fine-arts  degree  in  1963,  he 
settled  in  New  York.  He  rented  a  walk-up 
apartment  in  the  East  Village  and  lived 
mostly  on  yogurt.  In  due  course  he  got  a 
job  as  a  guard  at  the  Jewish  Museum,  and 
devoted  the  rest  of  his  time  to  painting. 
The  boredom  of  his  museum  job  was  mit- 
igated by  the  excitement  of  the  exhibitions 
that  the  progressive  director,  Allan  Solomon, 
organized.  For  Marden,  the  1964  Jasper 
Johns  show  was  a  revelation.  Johns  would 
confirm  him  in  his  allegiance  to  an  infi- 
nite gamut  of  grays. 

In  the  summer  of  1964,  Marden  quit  his 
job  and  took  off  for  Paris.  Courbet  and 
Manet  had  as  much  to  teach  him  as  Pi- 
casso or  Matisse.  He  seems  to  have  been 
struck  by  Manet's  revolutionary  use  of  gray 
as  an  active  color  and  by  Courbet's  use  of 
a  palette  knife  to  build  up  the  lowering 
grayness  of  rain  clouds  or  the  soggy  green- 
ness of  the  Jura's  wetlands— climatic  effects 


-'    ■*    ^  - 


t  '**" 


Brice  Marden  with    . 

his  wife,  Helen,  and    i 

their  daughters, 

Mirabelle  and  Melia, 

tside  their  Federal  house 

in  Greenwich  Village, 

December  1998.  Inset, 

a  corner  of  the  Martens' 

living  room  with  an 

assortment  of  Asian  art, 

which  Helen  collects. 


52s 


■*2j*£*l« 


made  palpable  in  paint,  comparable  to 
what  goes  on  in  Marden's  own  work.  The 
visit  to  Paris  coincided  with  Andre  Mal- 
raux's  well-intentioned  but  ill-advised  cam- 
paign to  scrub  the  face  of  Paris  clean 
(ill-advised  because  the  high-pressure 
cleaning  left  some  of  the  older  buildings 
susceptible  to  erosion).  Never  had  Parisian 
limestone  taken  the  light  so  gloriously. 
"The  flat  density  of  stucco,  stone,  and  tile 
constantly  drew  Marden's  attention,"  ac- 
cording to  Klaus  Kertess.  "He  sought  to 

assimilate  this  wallness  in  his  drawings 

He  made  frottage  rubbings  in  his  note- 
books, as  well  as  scratching  tracks  with 
his  comb." 

Back  in  New  York,  Marden 
and  his  wife  divorced,  and 
he  went  to  work  as  an  as- 
sistant to  Robert  Rausch- 
enberg— "the  most  naturally 
intelligent  person  I've  ever 
met,"  he  says,  "and  he's 
very  generous  with  his  thinking."  The  job 
entailed  little  in  the  way  of  duties.  Rausch- 
enberg  was  not  so  much  working  as  living 
it  up— or  should  one  say  down?  This  was 
Rauschenberg's  "dude  period."  He  had 
taken  to  wearing  a  porcupine-quill  jacket; 
his  shoulder-length  hair  was  elaborately 
coiffed,  and  he  did  little  but  drink  too 
much  bourbon,  watch  too  much  televi- 
sion, and  gallivant  around  Europe.  "It 
was  really  a  weird  job,"  Marden  told  the 
writer  Calvin  Tomkins.  "Technically  you're 
his  assistant,  but  also  you're  being  paid  to 
sit  around  and  drink  with  him.  [Bob]  was 
very  lonely  then,  and  sort  of  shaky."  Mar- 
den was  already  so  committed  to  a  set  of 
rules  he  had  formulated  for  himself  that 
he  had  no  need  of  a  mentor.  What  he 
gleaned  above  all  from  Rauschenberg  was 
reassurance.  He  realized  what  it  required 
to  be  a  successful  practicing  artist.  For 
years  the  Mardens  had  a  turtle  called 
Rauschenberg. 

Like  Rauschenberg,  Marden  spent  a 
great  deal  of  time  at  Max's  Kansas  City, 
the  ultra-hip  watering  hole,  which  opened 
on  lower  Park  Avenue  in  1965  and  lasted, 
in  its  original  form,  until  1974.  As  William 
Burroughs  said,  "Max's  was  at  the  inter- 
section of  everything."  But  Andy  Warhol's 
claim  that  the  place  was  "the  exact  spot 
where  Pop  Art  and  Pop  Life  came  togeth- 
er" is  not  strictly  true.  To  most  of  the  ab- 
stractionists who  congregated  there.  Pop 
art  seemed  like  pretty  thin  stuff,  just  an- 
other form  of  representationalism.  Mar- 
den gravitated  to  the  "heavy  hitters"  Serra 
and  John  Chamberlain  and  Carl  Andre 
who  hung  out  in  the  front  part  of  Max's. 
Warhol  and  his   continued  on  pm<.i  201 


VANITY     FAIR 


Mark  of 
Triumph 


i  adolescent, 

Alber  Elbaz— the  newly  anointed  ready-to-wear  de- 
signer at  Yves  Saint  Laurent— was  a  soldier  in  the  Is- 
raeli Army,  but  not  even  military  service  prepared  him 
for  the  ferocity  of  French  fashion.  "I  don't  sleep,"  com- 
plains the  Moroccan-born,  Tel  Aviv-reared  Elbaz, 
whom  the  Parisian  press  has  already  labeled  the 
"Woody  Allen  of  Fashion."  "I'm  always  so  nervous- 
each  season  I  have  to  reinvent  the  wheel!"  Elbaz's 
mandate  of  the  moment  is  to  reinvent  Rive  Gauche, 
the  pioneering  pret-d-porter  label  launched  by  Saint 
Laurent  and  his  prescient  business  partner,  Pierre 
Berge,  in  1 966.  And,  as  Elbaz  proved  with  his  elec- 
trifying debut  show  in  March,  he  is  fully  up  to  the 
challenge.  Even  Yves  Saint  Laurent's  mother,  Lucienne, 
dispatched  an  appreciative  letter  to  the  37-year-old 
former  Geoffrey  Beene  assistant.  "Thank  you,"  she 
wrote,  "for  making  my  son's  logo  glow  again." 

Elbaz's  inaugural  YSL  collection  sprang  directly 
from  an  oracular  pronouncement  of  Berge's.  "He 
said  to  me,  'Chanel  gave  women  freedom,  and  then 
Saint  Laurent  gave  them  power,'"  Elbaz  recounts. 
Transfixed  by  this  sweeping  historical  assessment, 
Elbaz  at  once  envisioned  "pants,  pants,  and  pants. 
And  high  heels."  The  pantsuit,  especially  worn  with 
heels,  is,  of  course,  a  signature  Saint  Laurent  look— a 
provocative  gender-bending  statement  when  intro- 
duced in  the  late  60s.  "The  collection  is  very  Saint 
Laurent,"  Elbaz  respectfully  concedes,  "but  still  a  lit- 
tle bit  me.  My  aim  is  to  bring  real  elegance,  style, 
and  chic  back  to  the  younger  crowd"— which  is  al- 
ready flocking  to  Yves  Saint  Laurent  Rive  Gauche 
as  the  coveted  new  cult  label.  But  even  as  Elbaz  is 
being  hailed  as  the  thinking  woman's  designer 
guru,  he  is  dreaming  of  escaping  fashion.  "I'd  like 
to  design  clothes  for  10  more  years  and  then  go.  I 
would  love  a  job  with  no  worries  and  no  pressures- 
it  would  be  fantastic  to  open  a  little  store  selling 
sandwiches  and  flowers."  But  until  that  blissful  day 
arrives,  Elbaz  vows  to  concentrate  on  "making  wom- 
en beautiful  again."  -AMY  FINE  COLLINS 

PHOTOGRAPH     BY     LORENZO     AGIUS 


DAMSEL 
IN   THIS    DRESS 

Rive  Gauche  designer 

Alber  Elbaz  at  his  Paris  atelier  with 

model  Ann-Catherine,  in  his 

Hitchcock-inspired  "Bird  Dress," 

March  10,  1999. 


Willi  her  prodigious 

talent — manifest  in  L3  hooks 
and  almost  every  literary 
prize  except  the  JNohel — 
Eudora  Welty  could  have 
reigned  as  the  grande  dame 
of  American  letters. 
But  her  sense  of  the 
ridiculous,  her  thirst 
for  experience,  and  her 
deep  attachment  to 
her  childhood  home  in 
Jackson,  Mississippi, 
have  made  her  something 
much  more  precious. 
For  Welly's  90th  birthdav 
her  friend  of  many  years 
WILLIE  MORRIS  pays 
tribute  to  the  woman 
whom  many  consider  the 
United  States'  greatest 
living  writer 


The  legendary  writer 

Eudora  Welty,  photographed 

in  her  native  Mississippi  in 

January  1997.  Welty  is 

often  called  the  American 

Jane  Austen. 


///<  night  sky  over  my  childhood  Jackson  was  velvety  black. 

1  could  see  the  full  constellations  in  it  and  call  their  names, 
when  I  could  read.  I  knew  their  myths.  Though  I  was  always 
waked  for  eclipses,  and  indeed  carried  to  the  window  as  an 
in/ant  in  amis  and  shown  Holley's  C  'omet  in  my  sleep,  and  though 
Id  been  taught  at  our  dining  room  luhlc  about  the  solar  system 
and  knew  the  earth  revolved  around  the  sun.  and  our  moon 
around  us.  I  never  found  out  the  moon  didn't  come  up  in  the 
west  until  I  was  a  writer  and  Herschel  Bricked,  the  literary  critic, 
told  me  after  I  misplaced  it  in  a  story  He  said  valuable  words  to 
me  about  my  new  profession:  "Always  be  sure  you  get  your 
moon  in  the  right  part  of  the  sky." 

— Eudora  Welty,  One  Writer's  Beginnings. 


ne  recent  Sunday  I  drove  Eudora  Welty 


along  the  spooky,  kudzu-enveloped  dirt  and  gravel  back  roads 
of  Yazoo  County,  Mississippi,  some  40  miles  north  of  Jackson. 
Dwarfed  like  a  child  by  the  stark  bluffs  outside  the  car  window, 
she  rode  shotgun  through  the  sunlight  and  misty  shadows.  "I 
haven't  even  seen  another  car  yet,"  she  noted  at  one  point. 
"When  was  the  last  time  we  saw  a  human  being?"  Her  voice, 
according  to  her  friend  the  novelist  Reynolds  Price,  remains 
"shy,  but  reliable  as  any  iron  beam." 

She  was  game  for  anything,  always  peering  around  the  next 
bend.  At  the  crest  of  a  bosky  hill,  a  narrower  and  darker  byway 
intersected  with  the  one  on  which  we  were  traveling.  "Eudora, 
I'm  going  to  make  a  left  and  drive  down  Paradise  Road,"  I  said. 
"We'd  be  fools  if  we  didn't,"  she  replied. 

One  of  Eudora  Welty's  fictional  characters  had  occasion  to 
remark  that  against  old  mortality  life  "is  nothing  but  the  conti- 
nuity of  its  love."  Welty,  often  called  the  Jane  Austen  of  Amer- 
ican letters,  has  charted  this  continuity  in  13  books,  including: 
three  novels  (The  Optimist's  Daughter,  published  in  1972,  won 
the  Pulitzer  Prize);  five  collections  of  short  stories;  two  novellas; 
a  volume  of  essays;  an  acclaimed  memoir,  One  Writer's  Begin- 
nings; and  a  children's  book.  (She  has  also  published  two  vol- 
umes of  her  photographs,  taken  in  Mississippi  and  elsewhere.) 

Her  work,  marked  by  what  the  critic  Jonathan  Yard- 
ley  calls  an  "abiding  tolerance  ...  a  refusal  to 
pass  judgment  on  the  actors  in  the  human  come- 
dy," has  won  every  literary  prize  except  the  No- 
bel, for  which  she  has  frequently  been  mentioned. 
Says  Price,  "In  all  of  American  fiction,  she  stands  for  me  with 
only  her  peers— Melville,  James,  Hemingway,  and  Faulkner— 
and  among  them  she  is,  in  some  crucial  respects,  the  most  life- 
giving."  She  once  wrote,  "My  wish,  indeed  my  continuing  pas- 
sion, would  be  not  to  point  the  finger  in  judgment,  but  to  part 
a  curtain,  that  invisible  shadow  that  falls  between  people;  the 


veil  of  indifference  to  each  other's  presence,  each  other's  wc 
der,  each  other's  human  plight." 

Eudora  Welty,  whom  many  consider  America's  greatest  1 
ing  writer,  was  born  in  Jackson  90  years  ago.  On  April  13  s 
enters  her  91st  year.  She  is  abidingly  revered  in  her  horn 
town,  where  her  birthdays  are  cause  for  celebration.  In  199 
when  Eudora  and  friends  gathered  at  her  favorite  restaurai 
Bill's  Tavern  (which  she  helped  get  started  by  supplyit 
quotes  of  praise  for  the  newspaper),  a  Greek  belly  danc 
performed.  Above  her  navel  were  written  the  words  "Eudo 
Welty  I  love  you."  During  another  celebration,  at  Lemur 
Bookstore,  letters  were  read  from  comrades  and  admire 
around  the  world,  including  President  Clinton.  John  Ferron 
her  Harcourt  Brace  editor,  wrote: 

Hail  Eudora 
Staunch  perennial 
I'm  looking  forward 
to  your  centennial 

Eudora,  who  is  quite  simply  the  funniest  person  I  have  ev< 
known,  could  easily  have  become  the  grande  dame  of  America 
letters,  but  clearly  would  have  found  herself  tittering  at  such  a  se 
important  posture.  She  is  wryly  self-effacing  with  a  gentle  iron 
Our  connections  go  back  considerably,  for  I  was  born  in  a  houi 
two  blocks  from  hers  in  the  Belhaven  neighborhood  of  Jackso 
and  christened  in  the  church  of  her  childhood,  Galloway  Mem< 
rial  Methodist,  where  as  a  girl  she  took  nickels  to  Sunday  schoc 
in  her  glove.  I  met  her  when  I  was  eight  or  nine  and  can  pinpoii 
exactly  where:  Eudora  always  shopped  for  groceries  at  an  ers 
while  establishment  called  the  Jitney  Jungle,  which  had  woode 
floors  and  flypaper  dangling  from  the  ceiling.  One  afternoon  du 
ing  World  War  II,  on  one  of  my  many  sojourns  into  Jackson  froi 
my  home  in  Yazoo  City,  I  accompanied  my  great-aunt  Maggief 
who  was  wearing  a  flowing  black  dress,  to  fetch  a  head  of  lettuca 
or  a  muskmelon  perhaps.  Eudora  was  at  the  vegetable  countej 
when  my  great-aunt  introduced  us.  I  remember  her  as  tall  an| 
slender,  her  eyes  luminous  blue.  As  we  were  leaving,  my  great 
aunt  whispered,  "She  writes  those  stories  her  own  self." 

Through  the  years  I  have  learned  to  expect  certain  kind! 
of  reactions  from  Eudora.  For  example,  when  one  tele; 
phones  her  for  a  meeting,  she  does  not  say,  "Let's  havJ 
lunch,"  but  rather,  "We  must  meet."  Her  conversation 
is  laced  with  phrases  such  as  "That  smote  me,"  anJ 
with  solicitous  interrogations,  including  "Don't  you  think?"  ol 
"Can't  you  imagine?"  Josephine  Haxton  of  Jackson,  who  writes 
under  the  nom  de  plume  Ellen  Douglas,  first  met  her  many  yeari 
ago  when  Eudora  went  to  Greenville,  Mississippi,  to  sign  copiel 
of  a  book  called  Music  from  Spain.  "Many  years  later,  when  mi 
children  were  long  since  grown  and  had  children  of  their  own,  j 
Josephine  tells  me,  "Eudora  said  to  me,  'Oh,  I  remember  so  welj 
that  day  I  came  to  Greenville  to  sign  books.  Your  children— thosa 
beautiful  children.'"  Others  recall  such  instances  of  her  magnanij 
mous  spirit.  One  of  them,  the  historian  and  novelist  Shelby  Foote 
tells  me,  "In  Eudora's  case,  familiarity  breeds  affection." 

Stories  about  her  have  always  abounded  in  Jackson.  In  the  1930s 
there  was  not  much  to  do  in  town  and  she  and  her  comrades  had  tc 
look  hard  for  entertainment.  They  were  especially  intrigued  wher 
one  Jackson  lady  announced  in  the  paper  that  her  night-blooming 
cereus  was  about  to  blossom.  According  to  Eudora's  friend  Suzanne 
Marrs,  "Eudora  and  her  group  would  often  gather  to  attend  the 


VANITY     FAIR 


MAY     1  9  9  <; 


MISSISSIPPI 
LEARNING 


'^0 


Welty  (left) 

accompanied  by  some 

of  her  hometown 

friends,  poet  Hubert 

Creekmore,  Margaret 

Harmon,  and 

Nash  K.  Burger,  who 

later  became  editor  of 

The  New  York  Times 

Book  Review,  in 

Brandon,  Mississippi, 

in  the  1930s. 


oomings,  and  they  eventually  formed  the 

light-Blooming  Cereus  Club,  of  which  Eudo- 

was  elected  president.  Their  motto  was: 

Oon't  take  it  cereus;  life's  too  mysterious.'" 

Patti  Carr  Black,  recently  retired  as  director 

"the  Mississippi  State  Historical  Museum,  is 

ie  of  the  best  sources  of  Welty  anecdotes. 

My  favorite  hours,"  she  says,  "are  spent  with 

udora  in  the  late  afternoon  sipping  Powers 

ish  Whiskey  and  going  back  in  her  incredi- 

e  memory  to  high  times  in  our  favorite  spot, 

ew  York  City.  She  quotes  entire  Bea  Lillie  lyrics,  especially  'It's 

etter  with  Your  Shoes  Off';  delivers  Bert  Lahr  punch  lines;  and 

ascribes  the  moves  of  the  Marx  Brothers  and  W  C.  Fields,  in- 

uding  Fields's  wiggle  of  his  little  finger.  She  also  does  a  great  ren- 

ition  of  Mae  West  inspecting  the  troops  up  and  down." 

But  it  isn't  just  the  locals  who  savor  their  memories  of  Eudora. 

/illiam  Maxwell,  who  was  her  editor  at  The  New  Yorker  begin- 

ing  in  1951,  loves  to  recall  her  visits  to  New  York,  particularly 

ne  specific  night.  "When  I  first  got  to  know  her  she  was  staying 

l  the  apartment  of  her  friend  and  editor  at  Harper's  Bazaar 

lary  Louise  Aswell,  and  what  I  remember  of  the  evening  is  Eu- 

ora's  acting  out  of  her  mother  telling  her  niece  the  story  of  Little 

led  Riding  Hood  while  simultaneously  reading  Time  magazine. 

t  could  have  been  transferred  to  the  stage  without  a  single 

hange  of  any  kind,  and  I  didn't  know  anybody  could  be  so  hi- 

irious.  Some  years  later,  when  we  were  living  on  the  fifth  floor  of 

walk-up  in  Murray  Hill,  she  came  with  the  manuscript  of  a 

lovella,  The  Ponder  Heart,  and  after  coffee  we  settled  down  to 

tear  her  read  it.  In  no  time  I  was  wiping  my  eyes.  Nothing  has 

ver  seemed  so  funny  since.  What  the  world  must  be  like  for  a 

>erson  with  so  exquisite  a  sense  of  humor,  I  don't  dare  think." 

At  dinners  these  days  Eudora's  stories  move  here  and  there  like 
i  gentle  breeze  that  emanates  from  Greenwich  Village  in  the  Pro- 
libition  years,  past  the  names  of  friends  long  dead,  and  on  to  her 
ravels  through  Mississippi  with  her  Kodak  during  the  Depres- 
sion, when  she  worked  as  a  photographer.  Questions  provoke 
)eregrinations.  "Eudora,"  I  asked  during  a  recent  gathering, 
'would  you  like  a  little  kitten?  I  have  one  named  Bubba."  "Well," 
Eudora  began,  "mine  has  been  a  dog  house  all  my  life.  My  moth- 
s' can't  stand  the  thought  of  a  cat.  Of  course,  she's  been  dead  a 
lumber  of  years.  I  like  little  kittens,  but  I  don't  think  I  can  take 
)ne.  I  remember  [novelist]  Caroline  Gordon.  The  first  time  I  ever 
iaw  her,  I  was  living  in  the  Village,  and  I  was  going  to  meet  her.  I 
vas  walking  along  Eighth  Avenue  and  she  was  carrying  around  a 
)unch  of  newborn  kittens  with  her,  and  she'd  go  up  to  people  on 
he  street  and  say,  'You  look  like  a  cat  person.  Wouldn't  you  like 
i  kitten?'  It  didn't  work  very  well.  She  had  a  good  many  left. 
Whatever  became  of  those  kittens,  I've  wondered." 

No  one  else  answers  questions  in  quite  this  way  now,  not  even 
n  Jackson. 

Eudora  has  never  married,  and  she  lives  alone  in  the 
house  her  father  built  in  1925  when  she  was  16  and 
the  nearby  streets  were  gravel  and  there  were  whis- 
pery  pine  forests  all  around.  On  the  front  lawn  is  a 
majestic  oak  tree.  ("Never  cut  an  oak,"  her  mother 
idvised  her.)  The  kitchen  of  the  old  house  looks  out  on  a  deep- 
»reen  garden  with  its  formal  bench  beneath  another  towering 
)ak  tree.  Eudora  loves  what  she  still  calls  "my  mother's  garden" 
ind  says  she  was  "my  mother's  yard  boy" 


My  wish  would  be  not 
to  point  the  finger  in  judgment," 
Welty  has  said,  "but  to  part 
a  curtain— that  invisible  shadow 
that  falls  between  people." 


Her  Tudor-style  house  has  a  sturdy  vestibule,  a  brown  gabled 
roof  on  the  second  story,  and  a  screened-in  side  porch  long  un- 
used. Excluding  the  time  she  has  spent  traveling,  she  has  lived 
and  worked  here  for  74  years.  "I  like  being  in  the  house  where 
nobody  else  has  ever  lived  but  my  own  family,"  she  says,  "even 
though  it's  lonely  being  the  only  person  left." 

She  calls  it  "my  unruly  home."  Books  of  all  kinds  are  every- 
where, stacked  in  corners,  on  tables  and  chairs.  There  are 
mountains  of  books,  and  on  every  flat  surface  one  finds  unan- 
swered mail.  Her  correspondence  is  so  voluminous,  she  says, 
that  she  is  unable  to  handle  it.  In  a  box  on  a  table  is  the 
Richard  Wright  Medal  for  Literary  Excellence  she  received  in 
1994.  "I'm  proud  to  have  it,"  she  says. 

These  days  Eudora  does  not  dress  up  for  visitors.  On  the 
morning  of  one  of  my  calls  she  was  wearing  a  blue  sweat  suit  and 
white  sneakers.  Her  short  hair  curls  around  the  top  of  her  ears. 
Her  eyes  are  large,  very  blue,  a  little  sad,  yet  still,  at  times,  vibrant 
with  mischief.  She  sits  near  a  front  window  in  an  electric  lift  chair 
that  makes  it  easy  for  her  to  stand  up.  She  calls  it  her  "ejection 
seat."  If  it  is  late  afternoon  and  she  feels  up  to  it,  she  will  press 
the  button  to  raise  herself  to  an  upright  position  and  suggest  you 
join  her  in  the  pantry  while  she  pours  a  couple  of  Maker's 
Marks.  "This  is  what  Katherine  Anne  Porter  called  'swish  likka,'" 
she  says,  quoting  "swich  licour"  from  Chaucer.  "This  is  powerful 
stuff."  Then,  faithfully  at  six  p.m.,  she  turns  on  the  television  for 
her  favorite  program.  The  NewsHour  with  Jim  Lehrer. 

Every  conversation  is  a  procession  of  continued  on  pa<,i  >>>» 

VANITY     FAIR      I 


■ 


Who  better  to  film  Washington  Irving 
famous  tale  of  Ichabod  Crane  and  tl 
Headless  Horseman  than  Tim  Burton,  who 
Beetlejuke,  Edwurd  Scissorhands,  ar 
Mars  Attacks!  marked  him  as  a  master 
gothic  dark  comedy?  Wrapping  i 
Sleepy  Hollow,  Burton  and  his  cast- 
Johnny  Depp,  Christina  Ricci,  Miranc 
Richardson,  Michael  Gambon,  ar 
Casper  Van  Dien — give  photograph) 
MARY  ELLEN  MARK  an  otherworldly  tal 
on  "the  first  American  horror  ston 


r 


LOVE  HURTS 

Co-stars  Johnny  Depp  and  Christina  Ricci 
as  Ichabod  Crane  and  Katrina  Nan  Tassel, 
the  lovers  in  Tim  Burton's  dark  thriller. 
Sleepy  Hollow.  Opposite,  Burton  holds  the 
Horseman's  head  on  the  film's  set  at 
the  Leavesden  Studio  in  Hertfordshire. 
England,  January  14.  1999. 


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LEGION  OF  DOOM 

Clockwise  from  top  left: 

Marc  Pickering  as  Young  Masbeth, 

Jeffrey  Jones  as  Reverend 

Steenwyck,  Michael  Gambon 

as  Baltus  Van  Tassel, 

Richard  Griffiths  as  Magistrate  *' 

Philipse,  and  Miranda  Richardson 

as  Lady  Van  Tassel. 

Photographed  on  the  Sleepy  .    •[ 

Hollow  set,  January  14-18,  1999. 


W9M*  ffj 


/ 


•■... 

■•■• 


im  Burton's  mind  is  a  spidery  attic, 
cluttered  with  50s-creepshow  influences, 
gothic  organ  music,  and  howling-wind  sound 
effects.  So  it  seems  plausible  that  his  forth- 
coming film  adaptation  of  "The  Legend  of 
Sleepy  Hollow,"  due  later  this  year,  was  a 
>  long-aborning  pet  project.  Washington  lr- 
-ving's  famous  short  story  about  Ichabod 
Crane  and  the  Headless  Horseman,  pub- 

'  \  ...  lished  in  1820,  was,  Burton  says,  "the  first 
American  horror  story"-and,  in  its  prevail- 
ing lightheartedness,  an  antecedent  to  just 
about  everything  Burton  has  done,  from  the 

\  terrifying-but-uproarious  "Large  Marge"  vi- 
gnette in  Pee-wee's  Big  Adventure  to  the  more 
fully  realized  horror-comedies  Beetlejuice, 
Edward  Sa'ssorhands,  and  Mars  Attacks! 

For  the  Ichabod  Crane  part,  Burton  cast 
Johnny  Depp,  who  is  fast  shaping  up  to  be 
the  De  Niro  to  Burton's  Scorsese,  having  al- 
ready played  the  title  roles  of  the  director's 
Edward  Scissorhands  and  Ed  Wood.  Katrina, 
the  farmer's  daughter  and  object  of  Icha- 
bod's  affections,  is  played  by  Christina  Ricci, 


■beeri  ki  Tim  Burton  moviesjbefore.  "She's  got 
a  good  silent-movie  qudtity,"  Burton  says. 
"She  Ibolcs  right  in  winteHn  England." 

Though  Burton  considered  shooting  Sleepy 
Hollow  in  its  real-life  setting  of  North  Tarry- 
town,  New  Yorl 
chilly  England 


)    ■ 


*"  includes  a  wonderful  assortment  of  misshapen 
British  character  actors— Michael  Gambon 
Iflhe  Singing  Detective),  Richard  Griffiths 
[Withnail  and  /),  and  Ian  McDiarmid  (the 
Star  Wars  movies)— the  English  beauty  Miran- 
da Richardson,  and  Christopher  Walken  as  a 
^mysterious soldier.  —DAVID  kamp 


As  the  100th  anniversary  of 
Duke  Ellington's  birth  spawns  tributes  in  more  than 
kiw>  rlrvzpn  pitips   tiip  ia/7  kind's  lifp  still  holds  a  rpntral  mvs 


the  indefinable  bond  between  Ellington,  a  no 
and  composer  Billy  Strayhorn,  whose  open  homosexuality  was  rare 
in  its  day.  DAVID  HAJDU,  president  of  the  Duke  Ellington  Society 

and  Strayhorn's  biographer,  examines  a  collaboration  that 
began  in  1938  with  an  instantaneous  meeting  of  musical  minds  and 
led  to  such  classics  as  "Take  the  'A'  Train"  and  "Satin  ^ 
Photographs  by  GORDON  PARKS 


m*Q.*<&. ' 


■;m^-. <.;.,;  i»Hr^)fii-^ti»'.'i 


•     SWING  SHIFT 

Duke  Ellington  (on  the  phone) 
called  Billy  Strayhorn  his 
"writing-arranging  companion"; 
the  team  made  music  together 
for  almost  three  decades. 
In  San  Francisco,  Life  photographer 
Gordon  Parks  captured  the  pair 
pulling  an  all-nighter  on  the  in 
of  a  I960  studio  session. 


ecretly  dying  of  the 


cancer  that  would  claim  him  within 
months,  Duke  Ellington,  sallow  and  thin, 
stood  before  the  assembled  in  Westminster 
Abbey  on  October  24,  1973,  for  the  pre- 
miere of  his  third  and  final  Sacred  Concert, 
and  a  chorus  sang  the  74-year-old  com- 
poser's words:  "Every  man  prays  in  his 
own  language."  Publicly,  Ellington  spent 
much  of  his  last  decade  communing  with 
the  divine  in  grand,  if  unorthodox,  devo- 
tional performances.  Privately,  retiring  in 
the  hotel  rooms  that  were  his  home  for 
more  than  half  a  century,  he  used  a  prayer 
book.  His  son,  Mercer,  later  donated  one 
of  Ellington's  volumes,  a  1966  edition  of 
77te  Catholic  Hymnal,  to  the  Smithsonian 
Institution.  When  an  archivist  unpacked  it 
recently,  she  called  me.  She  had  found 
some  photographs  tucked  between  the 
pages,  and  she  thought  I  should  see  one 
of  them  before  it  was  filed  away,  erasing 
any  record  of  its  origin.  It's  a  snapshot  of  a 
sweet-faced,  bespectacled  African-American 
man,  Billy  Strayhorn,  half  dressed,  reading 
a  book  in  bed. 

What  was  Duke  Ellington  saying,  in  his 
own  language?  Why  would  one  man,  read- 
ing in  solitude,  care  to  look  at  a  picture  of 
another  man  doing  the  same?  And  what 
might  that  have  to  do  with  the  music  that 
is  Ellington's  legacy? 

This  April  29  marks  the  100th  anniver- 
sary of  the  birth  of  Edward  Kennedy  El- 
lington, one  of  the  true  pioneers  of  jazz. 
Duke  reigns  omnipotently  over  the  cultur- 
al landscape,  or  at  least  its  high  ground: 
Concerts  and  conferences  devoted  to  El- 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


ingtOD  arc  scheduled  at 
dozens  of  arts  centers 
and  institutions,  from 

New  York's  Lincoln 
(  cnler  to  Ohio's  Cuy- 
ahoga Community 
College.  A  torrent  of 
new  Ellington  CD 
collections  and  reis- 
sues will  land  atop 
the  more  than  150 
titles  in  circulation. 
There  will  be  a  na- 
tionally syndicated 
radio  series,  musical  cel- 
ebrations in  three  dozen  cities,  even  new 
ballets  in  Duke's  honor. 

Fleetingly,  the  face  in  that  photograph 
from  Ellington's  prayer  book  shifts  in  and 
out  of  view.  In  panel  discussions,  as  ex- 
perts ponder  Ellington  the  Legend,  Billy 
Strayhorn  is  mentioned  with  reverence.  In 
out-of-the-way  cabarets  in  Manhattan  and 
Istanbul,  vocalist  Allan  Harris  has  been 
performing  all-Strayhorn  tributes.  Film- 
maker Irwin  Winkler  is  now  casting  a 
screen  version  of  Strayhorn's  life.  And  the 
credits  on  virtually  every  new  Ellington 
CD  list  William  Thomas  Strayhorn  as 
composer  or  co-creator  of  some  of  the 
best-known  pieces  associated  with  Duke, 
including  "Take  the  'A'  Train,"  "Satin 
Doll,"  "Chelsea  Bridge,"  and  suites  such 
as  "Such  Sweet  Thunder." 

Yet  Strayhorn,  Ellington's  chief  collab- 
orator and  perhaps  the  most  influential 
figure  in  his  creative  life,  is  still,  some- 
how, but  an  ethereal  presence.  Though 
their  careers  are  elementally  inseparable, 
the  true  nature  of  their  collaboration  re- 
mains virtually  unknown— or  unspoken. 
As  Strayhorn's  biographer,  I  have  ex- 
plored their  three-decade  partnership  ex- 
tensively; indeed,  some  of  the  interviews 
quoted  herein  were  gathered  for  my  1996 
book,  Lush  Life.  And  the  question  re- 
mains: How  to  explain  a  relationship  be- 
tween men  of  such  contrasts?  Ellington, 
tall  and  commanding,  a  master  jazz  in- 
novator who  managed  his  orchestra  and 
his  expansive  songbook  like  a  small  in- 
dustry, a  brilliant  scholar  of  the  streets 
whose  regal  air  and  grandiloquence, 
vaguely  ironic,  had  the  charm  of  an  irre- 
sistible con  game;  Strayhorn,  tiny,  atten- 
tive, demure,  a  consummate  composer 
and  arranger,  content  to  remain  in  Duke's 
massive  shadow,  a  culture  buff  who  rel- 
ished New  York  (as  well  as  Paris,  eventu- 
ally) and  developed  a  taste— and  oversize 
appetite— for  high  style  in  food,  fashion, 
and  nightlife. 

In  the  section  on  Strayhorn  in  his  1973 
memoir,  Music  Is  My  Mistress,  Ellington 


was,  as  always,  poetically  obtuse  on  tl, 
subject:  "He  was  not,  as  he  was  often  rt 
ferreel  to  by  many,  my  alter  ego.  Bill 
Strayhorn  was  my  right  arm,  my  left  arrfl 
all  the  eyes  in  the  back  of  my  head,  n 
brainwaves  in  his  head,  and  his  in  mine.! 

Many  fellow  musicians  have  callel 
theirs  a  unique  case  of  artistic  intimacl 
"Ellington's  relationship  with  Strayhoa 
was  one  the  likes  of  which  I  will  nevJ 
see  and  maybe  the  world  will  never  sa 
again,"  says  Luther  Henderson,  the  corl 
poser  and  arranger  with  whom  Ellingtd 
and  Strayhorn  crafted  many  of  their  mot 
ambitious  projects,  including  several  Ion/ 
form  works  for  symphony  orchestra.  "I 
was  obviously  a  special  relationship.  Dull 
had  an  enormous  love  for  Billy  apart  froJ 
his  work,"  explains  George  Avakian,  E 
lington's  longtime  producer  at  Columb 
Records.  "It  was  a  love  affair  between  tr, 
two,  as  artists,"  remarked  the  late  tron 
bonist  and  arranger  Billy  Byers. 

That's  the  essence  of  the  story,  I  at 
convinced:  they  loved  each  other.  Bt 
what  kind  of  love?  As  Ellington  frequen 
ly  noted,  he  and  Strayhorn  abhorred  a 
categories,  whether  aesthetic,  social,  r< 
cial,  or  emotional.  Moreover,  it  seen 
that  Duke  Ellington,  a  notorious  Lotha 
io,  loved  Billy  Strayhorn  more  fully  an 
deeply  than  he  loved  any  woman  in  h 
life— excepting  his  mother  and  his  siste 
Ruth.  No  matter  how  many  scholarl 
panels  we  convene,  the  complexity  ( 
their  love  remains  elusive,  even  in  our  oi 
tensibly  enlightened  age. 


ith  a  conjurer's  n 

gard  for  the  allui 

of  the  unknowr 

Ellington  alway 

kept  the  details  c 

his   collaboratio 

with  Strayhorn 

mystery.   "Edward  always  used  to  sa} 

'Don't  peek  your  hole  card,'"  explaine 

the  late  Marian  Logan,  wife  of  Ellinj 

ton's  friend  and  doctor,  Arthur  Logan. 

"[Edward]  would  never  answer  th 
question  'Who  wrote  this?  Who  di- 
this?'"  recalls  Teo  Macero,  the  arrange 
and  producer  who  made  several  Ellingto 
albums  for  Columbia.  "He'd  say,  'Sweeti 


CALIFORNIA  SUIT! 

Ellington  (far  right)  compares  notes  wit 

Strayhorn  on  their  terrace  at  Hollywood 

Chateau  Marmont  in  1960.  The  fivt 

foot-two-inch  Strayhorn  (nickname 

"Swee'  Pea,"  "Strays,"  and  "Billums")  wa 

usually  comfortable  letting  the  outsize  Duk 

receive  the  lion's  share  of  the  acclairr 

In  later  years,  Ellington  kept  this  snapshc 

of  his  composing  partner  (top)  wedge< 

in  his  ever  present  prayer  book 


m 


They  were  like  one  mind.  They  were  like 
Clark  Kent  and  Superman.1 


T^BB^jf^TRBB 

■BmbL.       >  B  IS  ant- 

Bjl*"  "    1          ""jS 

■Mi                           HK 

i   1           3Br               ^^■■■E 

hi     HzzibVI 

kilPHtllB   *-j*BS    SB 

:*,  i  •*•.»**  ■n",--  v^'«           b 

.  .  .  you  know,  I  don't  know.  Maybe 
Billy,  you  know,  me  . . .  '  And  il  would 
go  round  and  round  and  round." 

Ironically  enough,  when  he  first  inel 
Strayhoin,  in  1938,  Ellington  was  hardly  in 
need  of  a  muse.  Not  even  40  and  a  hand- 
leader  for  nearly  20  years,  Ellington  had 
proved  to  be  not  merely  a  skillful  writer  of 
distinctive  popular  songs  ("Mood  Indigo," 
"Solitude,"  "Sophisticated  Lady")  but  also 
a  serious  composer  of  more  intricate  works 
("Creole  Rhapsody,"  "Reminiscing  in  Tem- 
po") which  had  begun  to  redefine  jazz  as  a 
music  for  the  ears  as  well  as  the  feet,  earn- 
ing due  praise  from  highbrow  critics  and 
composers  such  as  Aaron  Copland.  Elling- 
ton, however,  recognized  Strayhorn's  talents 
as  a  pianist,  composer,  lyricist,  and  ar- 
ranger when  the  prodigy,  then  23,  attended 
one  of  Duke's  concerts  in  Pittsburgh.  (The 
pair  were  introduced  backstage  by  William 
Augustus  "Gus"  Greenlee,  the  charismatic 
sports  impresario,  nightclub  owner,  and 
presumed  racketeer.)  Ellington  was  so  tak- 
en with  Strayhorn's  skills  that  he  immedi- 
ately implored  him  to  write  songs  for  the 
band,  swiftly  jotting  down  directions  to  his 
Harlem  apartment,  subway  line  and  all- 
scrawls  which  Strayhorn  ingeniously  fash- 
ioned, within  a  week  or  two,  into  the  swing 
classic  "Take  the  'A  Train." 

Strayhorn  had  gone  as  far  as 
Pittsburgh  could  take  him. 
Conservatory-trained,  he  had 
already  composed  several  so- 
phisticated pieces  merging 
jazz  and  the  classical  tradition; 
played  bar  piano  all  around 
town;  led  his  own  jazz  trio;  arranged  for 
half  a  dozen  local  bands  (black,  white, 
and  mixed);  and  written  songs  that  would 
later  become  jazz  standards,  including 
"Something  to  Live  For,"  "Your  Love  Has 
Faded,"  and  his  signature  piece,  "Lush 
Life."  Highly  regarded  by  the  few  who 
knew  him,  Strayhorn  lost  ground,  none- 
theless, as  a  result  of  two  provincial  pres- 
sures: his  trio  and  his 
main  big-band  affiliation, 
both  mixed-race  groups, 
had  been  forced  to  dissolve 
after  incidents  of  prejudice 
against  Strayhorn,  because 
he  was  African-American;  and 
he  was  dropped  from  the  best 
black  band  in  town,  because 
he  was  gay. 

In  a  drumbeat  after  they 
met,  Ellington  had  him  move 
into  his  apartment  on  Edge- 
combe Avenue  in  Harlem's  tony 
Sugar  Hill  district,  where  Stray- 
horn lived  like  one  of  the  family 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


wiih  Ellington's  girlfriend  Mildred  Dixon, 

Duke's  only  sibling,  Ruth,  and   his  son, 
Mercer,  (Ellington  was  estranged,  though 
never   legally   separated,    from    his   wife, 
I  diia  )  The  benefits  of  their  collaboration 
proved  exquisitely  mutual:  Ellington  gained 
a  second  set  of  gifts  to  help  expand  his 
musical  palette  and  take  him  beyond  the 
big-band  idiom  into  the  worlds  of  the  con- 
cert stage  and  the  theater;  Strayhorn,  in 
turn,  now  had  a  world-class  vehicle  for  his 
music  and  the  freedom  to  compose  with- 
out bearing  public  scrutiny  and  the  risk  of 
rejection  for  his  homosexuality.  That  Stray- 
horn would  toil  largely  behind  the  scenes, 
often  contributing  anony- 
mously to  the  ever  broad- 
ening   Ellington    canon, 
worked  to  the  advantage 
of  both. 

And    that    Ellington 
might  not  have  really  re- 
quired the  young  man's 
assistance  would  quickly 
become  moot;  they  grew 
reliant   upon  each  other. 
"His  approval  was  like  go- 
ing out  with  your  armor  on, 
instead  of  going  out  naked," 
Ellington  said  of  Strayhorn 
in  a  1968  interview.  "We  had 
a  relationship  that  nobody  else 
in  the   world   would   under- 
stand." The  composers  worked 
together  from  1938  to  1967- 
often  closely,  occasionally  as  a 
sort  of  musical  tag  team,  trading 
portions  of  pieces  in  mid-creation. 
Wherever  in  the  world  his  per- 
formances took  him,  Ellington  called 
Strayhorn  religiously,  writing  songs 
by  phone,  virtually  every  night.  Their 
collaborative  output  includes  dozens 
of  jazz  masterworks,   from   songs 
such  as  "Day  Dream"  and  "The  Star- 
Crossed  Lovers"  to  extended  jazz- 
orchestra  pieces,  ^^^^^^ 


from  the  Broadway  musical  Beggar's  II<\ 
da)  tO  lilni  scores. 

"Our  rapport  was  the  closest,"  wroj 
Ellington.  Indeed,  according  to  photogrl 
pher  Gordon  Parks,  who  spent  several  daj 
observing  Ellington  and  Strayhorn  in  196J 
on  assignment  for  Life  magazine,  "the 
were  like  one  mind."  Preparing  for  a  Lcj 
Angeles  recording  session,  the  pair  share 
a  small  suite  at  the  Chateau  Marmont  i 
Hollywood,  Parks  remembers.  Ellingtc 
would  start  writing  late  in  the  evening  whi| 
Strayhorn  slept;  around  two  a.m.,  Stray- 
horn would  awaken 

OukeBttngtor 


Ellington 


Blington-G*9 


■:  F W****°*i_  t/Ot<**  h 


GRACE  NOTES 

Stylish  and  always  a  step  ahead 
of  convention,  Strayhorn,  photographec 
in  a  Las  Vegas  rehearsal  hall  in  1955 
by  William  Claxton,  helped  chart  Duk 
forays  beyond  the  boundaries  of  jazz, 
\    contributing  to  orchestral  pieces  (lop), 
\    a  ballet,  even  movie  scores  such  as 
i     those  for  Anatomy  of  a  Murder  ( 1959) 
[    and  Paris  Blues  ( 1961 ). 


Billy  would  sit 

and  stare  into  his  eyes ... 

and  Duke  would  stare 

back ...  and  Billy  would  go 

out  and  write  what 

Duke  wanted.' 


ROAD  PICTURES 

Ellington  and  Strayhorn  relished  the  staccato 
odyssey  of  the  musical  life.  In  the  early  60s, 
they  sometimes  doubled  up  in  hotel  rooms  when 
collaborating  (top),  then  savored  the  results, 
evident  in  their  reaction  (opposite)  to  a  screening 
of  Anatomy  of  a  Murder,  with  its  driving  Ellington- 
Strayhorn  score.  Lena  Home  often  joined  them. 
Having  had  a  brief  fling  with  Ellington,  Home  was 
Strayhorn's  closest  confidante,  hosting  him  at 
her  Palm  Springs  home  (below).  At  San  Francisco's 
Fairmont  Hotel  (above),  Home  joked  with 
Duke,  Billy,  and  jazz  historian  Patricia  Willard. 


and  resume 
composing  where  Ellington  had 
left  off,  while  Ellington  would 
take  Strayhorn's  place  in  bed. 
"One  person  would  work  until 
r  he  got  sleepy,"  recalls  Parks. 
^f  "They  never  seemed  to  be  in  the 
T  room  at  the  same  time.  They  were 
like  Clark  Kent  and  Superman. 
You  wondered  if  they  were  really 
the  same  person,  changing  dis- 
guises in  the  bedroom."  What's 
more,  Parks  says,  "they  didn't  talk 
about  the  music.  One  would  just 
leave  it  for  the  other  one,  and  he 
would  pick  up  as  if  he  had  been 
writing  the  whole  thing  himself." 
Ruth  Ellington  described  the  com- 
munication between  her  brother  and 
Strayhorn  as  virtually  psychic.  "I've  seen 
[Strayhorn]  walk  into  Duke's  dressing 
room,"  she  recalled,  "and  Duke  would 
say,  'Oh,  Billy,  I  want  you  to  finish  this 
thing  for  me.'  Just  like  that.  And  Billy 
would  sit  and  stare  into  his  eyes  . . .  and 
Duke  would  stare  back,  and  then  Billy 
would  say,  'O.K.'  They  wouldn't  even  ex- 
change a  word.  They'd  just  look  into 
each  other's  eyes,  and  Billy  would  go  out 
and  write  what  Duke  wanted.  That's  why 
he  and  Duke  got  along  so  well—because 
he  could  look  at  people  and  see  through 
them.  If  he  looked  at  you,  he  could  tell 
exactly  what  you  were." 

Ellington  couldn't  abide  such  an  in- 

i    trusion— from  anyone  other  than  Stray- 

[    horn.   "He  didn't  like  anybody  who 

[    could  read  his  mind,"  his  son,  Mercer, 

i     remarked.  "That's  what  gave  him  his 

I    strength  over  people.  Pop  knew  every- 

|    body's  weakness,  but  he  would  never, 

never— oh,  man,  never— he'd  never  let 

anybody  know  his.  Strayhorn  was  the 

only  one.  He  let  Strayhorn  in  the 

door.  That  door  was  locked  for  every- 


body else,  and  I  do  mean  everybody 
family,  his  women  . . .  me,  too.  before  ll 
old  man  was  dying,  and  I  was  the  on 
one  sitting  there." 

If  Ellington  granted  his  collaboraf 
unique  emotional  access,  the  key  to 
was  their  music.  "Let  me  tell  you  tl 
one  thing  that  will  explain  everythii 
there  is  to  know  about  Duke  Ellin 
ton,  including  that  magic  betwe 
Duke    Ellington   and    Billy   Stra 
horn,"  said  a  friend  of  both  co 
posers.   "Music.  That's  it.   Dul 
Ellington  lived,  breathed,  ale,  a 
drank  music.  That's  all  that  real 
mattered  to  him— nothing  els 
That's  what  he  loved.  And  I 
loved    Billy   Strayhorn  becau 
they  made  music  together." 
Marian   Logan,  perhaps  because  si 
was  the  wife  of  a  physician,  had  a  mo 
diagnostic  view.  "Everybody  knows  E 
ward  had  eight  million  women,"  she  sai 
"You  have  that  many— and  you're  nev 
home  for  any  longer  than  a  day  eve 
year— and  you  don't  have  to  get  over 
close  to  none  of  them,  and  you  don't  ha1 
to  worry  none  about  them  getting  tc 
close  to  you.  The  only  real  partner  tht 
man  ever  had  was  Billums  [Strayhorn].  H 
called  him  his  'musical  companion,'  yo 
know.   Strayhorn  adored  that.   [Edward 
kept  everybody  else  very  far  away,  built 
wall  around  himself— a  big,  gold,  shin 
wall.  The  only  person  inside  with  him  ii 
there  was  Billy  Strayhorn.  He  wouldn't  le 
his  own  doctor  in,  believe  me. 

"Edward  had  a  kind  of  intimatenes 
with  Strayhorn  that  he  never  gave  hi: 
girlfriends,  none  of  them,"  Logan  contin 
ued.  "He  trusted  him  [because]  of  th< 
one  thing  that  cut  way  down  deep  intc 
him,  and  that  means  the  music.  It's  han 
to  explain  what  it  was.  He  had  a  very 
very,  very  deep  love  for  Strayhorn,  anc 
Strayhorn  obviously  loved  Duke,  too,  tc 
work  with  him  like  that  for  all  thos< 
years.  You  can  call  it  whatever  you  want 
It  had  all  to  do  with  his  music,  and  '. 
think  it  was  the  only  kind  of  love  Elling 
ton  was  truly  capable  of." 


Though  artistically  plausible 
Logan's  assessment  over 
looks  paternal  love.  Fron 
the  onset  of  their  associa 
tion,  Ellington  includec 
Strayhorn  in  his  familia 
circle— and  inserted  himself 
in  Strayhorn's;  Duke  would  wire  Billy's 
mother,  Lillian,  back  home  in  Pitts 
burgh,  on  her  birthday  and  Mother's  Day. 
A  generation  older  and  far  more  promi 
nent  than  his  junior  partner,  Ellington 

MAY      1999 


mmni  mmiAVAvA 


<■-■; 


young  and  sexual.  Listen  to  his  music. 

He  never  aged  a  day, 

till  Billy  died." 


■mr 


J* 
v 


i 


would  seem  an  obvious  father  figure  I  hen 
again  he  avoided  the  obvious  in  most  mat- 
ters of  business,  art,  and  family,  "That's  the 
waj  ii  probably  looks,  a  father-and-son  thing, 
but  it  wasn't  that  simple  at  all,"  recalls  I  ena 
l  Ionic,  Strayhorn's  dearest  friend  and  confi- 
dante. Home,  who  still  keeps  Strayhorn's  por- 
trait on  her  nightstand,  also  worked  with 
Ellington  and  had  something  of  a  Ring  with 
him  once  "Duke  didn't  want  to  be  anybody's 
father  hell,  no!  Not  even  Ins  own  son's,  ami 
certainly  not  Billy's,  lie  wasn't  old  enough 
to  be  a  lather!"  she  says  with  a  big  laugh. 
"Duke  was  young  forever  he  thought  he 
was,  anyway  young  and  sexual.  Listen  to  his 
music.  He  never  aged  a  day.  till  Billy  died." 

When  Billy  Strayhorn,  then  51,  succumbed 
to  esophageal  cancer  on  May  31,  1967,  El- 
lington, then  68,  fought  to  come  to  terms 
with  it,  while  those  around  him  struggled  to 
understand  Ellington's  reaction.  Mercer,  who 
served  as  road  manager  for  the  orchestra  at 
the  time,  recalled  his  father  as  angry  and 
distraught.  "He  said,  'Why  me?  Why  did 
this  have  to  happen  to  me?'  Only  time  I  re- 
member him  ever  saying,  'Fuck  it,'  he  didn't 
want  to  play."  Shortly  after  Strayhorn's  death, 
pianist  Donald  Shirley,  a  friend  of  both  El- 
lington's and  Strayhorn's,  went  backstage  to 
see  Duke  at  the  end  of  a  performance  and 
found  him  alone  at  the  piano,  head  bowed, 
playing  Strayhorn's  "Lotus  Blossom"  over 
and  over. 

Ellington's  grief  was  so  deep  that  his 
publicist.  Joe  Morgen,  circulated  what  has 
been  considered  a  fabricated  interview  with 
the  deceased,  reportedly  to  deflect  rumors 
about  the  musicians'  close  relationship.  In  it, 
an  uncharacteristically  tough-talking  Stray- 
horn  justifies  his  bachelorhood  by  claim- 
ing, loopily,  that  his  apartment  was  too 
sloppy  for  any  gal  to  stomach. 

The  degree  to  which  the  mercurial  love 
between  the  pair  may  or  may  not  have 
seeped  past  the  chalk  lines  of  heterosexual 
friendship  is  unknowable,  though  it  proved 
to  be  anything  but  imponderable.  As  Stray- 
horn's biographer,  and  the  president  of  the 


Duke  Ellington  Society,  I've  been  asked  lit- 
erally scores  of  times  if  their  relationship 
had  a  homosexual  component.  In  the  muted 
Ellingtonian  tradition,  I've  tried  to  dodge 
the  question  gracefully 

Yes,  Strayhorn  was  gay,  and  he  undoubt- 
edly had  a  love  lor  Ellington;  however.  Stray- 
horn was  known  as  monogamous  and  ap- 
peared wholly  devoted  to  each  of  his  lour 
main  companions  in  turn.  Might  he  have 
longed  for  a  more  amorous  involvement 
with  Ellington?  Perhaps,  some  have  said.  "I 
think  that  if  Strayhorn  could  have  construct- 
ed a  relationship  with  Ellington,  then  he 
would  have,"  Mercer  told  me.  (Mercer  died 
at  76  in  1996.)  "He  loved  him  that  much." 

As  for  Duke,  Mercer  said— with  no  hint 
of  spin— he  had  always  simply  assumed  that 
his  lather's  bond  with  Strayhorn,  his  legen- 
dary sexual  appetite,  and  his  seemingly 
boundless  sense  of  adventure  likely  led  to 
some  experimentation  with  Strayhorn.  "I 
don't  know  for  a  fact— 1  didn't  watch  them," 
he  said.  "I  just  presumed  as  much.  So  did 
the  cats  [in  the  band].  One  told  me  he 
walked  in  on  them  one  time.  I  never  pressed 
the  issue.  It  seemed  like  a  given." 

A  few  of  those  close  to  Duke  Ellington 
discussed  homosexuality  with  him  directly. 
According  to  Sam  Shaw,  producer  of  the 
1961  film  Paris  Blues,  scored  by  Ellington 
and  Strayhorn,  "Duke  talked  to  me  about 
Billy  and  the  whole  subject  of  homosexuali- 
ty. In  certain  [African]  tribes,  the  priests 
wore  blue  robes,  which  were  the  symbol  of 
their  status.  They  were  considered  holy,  and 
they  were  bisexual— part  of  the  African  cul- 
ture. Duke  accepted  that  as  part  of  nature." 

Some  of  Ellington's  personal  beliefs,  feel- 
ings, and  preferences— including,  for  instance, 
his  habit  of  wearing  blue  clothing— are  more 
than  just  subjects  of  gossip  because  they  had 
a  significant  effect  on  what  he  brought  to  the 
public.  This  year,  as  innumerable  celebra- 
tions acknowledge  his  contributions  to  20th- 
century  culture,  one  accomplishment  may 
go  little  noted:  Duke  Ellington  accepted, 
nurtured,  supported,  and  empowered  a  small, 
shy  gay  man  whom  he  loved  as  a  soul  mate, 


and  he  gave  voice  to  that  man's  mus 
through  Ins  own.  I  here's  a  sound  withi 
the  sound  we  think  ol  as  Lllingtoma.  an 

much  of  it  is  a  world  apart  from  the  a 
serlive  drive  of  big-band  swing.  "Passk 
flower,"  "Lotus  Blossom,"  "A  flower  Is 
Lovesome  Thing,"  "Minuet  in  Blues."  I 
do/ens  of  Billy  Strayhorn  compositions  th; 
Ellington  performed  and  recorded  with  h 
orchestra,  the  listener  encounters  expre 
sions  of  humanity's  subtler  shades  a  genth 
ness.  a  sensitivity,  sometimes  a  sadness,  a 
guably  a  gay  sensibility,  there  on  the  jukebc 
from  the  same  band  that  played  "It  Don 
Mean  a  Thing  if  It  Ain't  Got  That  Swing 
Though  Billy  Strayhorn  could  swing  whe 
he  wanted  (having  written  Ellington's  them 
song,  "Take  the  'A  Train,"  the  leitmotif  c 
the  whole  swing  era),  other  things  meant 
thing  to  him,  too.  Billy  Strayhorn  con 
posed  eight  songs  about  flowers. 

"The  music  of  Duke  Ellington  is  regarC 
ed  as  so  great  and  so  important  now,"  note 
Kevin  McGruder,  executive  director  of  th 
organization  Gay  Men  of  African  Descent 
"To  think  that  some  of  it  is  the  voice  of 
gay  man  making  distinctive  statements  o 
his  own  is  quite  something.  It's  a  real  teste 
ment  to  Duke  that  he  embraced  Billy  Stray 
horn  the  way  he  did  and  gave  him  that  ou 
let.  I  can't  imagine  any  other  bandleader  o 
his  time  doing  that." 

During  the  seven  years  between  Stray 
horn's  death  and  Ellington's,  of  cancer  or 
May  24,  1974,  the  aging  composer  turnec 
his  attention  to  God.  He  created  three  majoi 
works  of  sacred  music  and  performed  then 
in  churches  and  temples,  accompanied  b) 
singers,  dancers,  and  a  full  orchestra.  "He 
started  channeling  his  music  and  his  deep 
capacity  for  love  toward  God,"  explains  the 
Reverend  Janna  Steed,  a  United  Methodist 
theologian  now  writing  a  book  about  Elling- ; 
ton's  religious   music.   "His  theology  was  ik 
quite  simple.  All  Duke  was  saying,  basically,  a 
is  'God  is  love,  and  love  is  the  answer  to 
everything.'" 

For  reference,  he  always  had  his  prayer 
book.  □ 


Portman 


continued  from  page  15  0  father.  "She  was 
born  to  do  this.  She's  formidable." 

Portman  acknowledges  she  has  a  lot  to 
learn  about  stage  technique,  but  on  film  her 
subtlety  really  shines.  "She  knew  exactly 
what  to  do,"  says  Tim  Hutton,  who  played  a 
29-year-old  man  who  becomes  infatuated 
with  Natalie's  13-year-old  character  in  Beau- 
tiful Girls.  "The  scenes  with  her  were  the 
scenes  I  looked  forward  to  the  most,  be- 
cause I  knew  there  would  be  real  clarity 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


coming  from  her.  She  knew  what  she  want- 
ed, but  she  was  also  extremely  free  in  the 
choices  she  made.  Every  take  was  different. 
Some  people  do  the  same  thing  over  and 
over  again,  but  Natalie  really  listens,  so  if  I 
did  something  different  in  take  two,  she  made 
these  beautiful  adjustments.  To  do  that  at 
the  age  of  44  is  extraordinary,  but  at  13  ...  " 

Although  critics  have  sometimes  noted 
Portman's  inexperience,  she  has  general- 
ly dazzled  them  as  well.  What  she  lacks  in 
technique,  she  makes  up  for  in  magic:  "She 
gives  off  a  pure  rosebud  freshness  that  can't 


be  faked,"  gushed  The  New  York  Times's  I 
Ben  Brantley  in  his  review  of  The  Diary  of  I 
Anne  Frank.  Brantley  also  rhapsodized  over  J 
Portman's  "radiance,"  found  "an  ineffable 
grace  in  her  awkwardness,"  and  added  thatfe 
"her  very  skin  seems  to  glow  with  the 
promise  of  miraculous  transformations." 

Pretty  heady  stuff  for  a  teenager.  And  in 
some  ways  Portman  does  seem  to  be  a  typ- 
ical schoolgirl.  "See  what  she's  really  like?" 
a  friend  of  hers  says  jokingly,  showing  me 
his  notebook— where  Natalie  has  written 
"Big  Dork."  But  the  real  Natalie  is  a  proto- 
typical Good  Girl.  Today  her  government 

MAY      1999 


aclicr  lectures  the  class  about  cheating, 
impluining  that  it  has  gotten  "so  outra- 
:ous"  no  one  even  bothers  to  conceal  it 
lyniorc.  Portman  sits  there  quietly  with  her 
ngthy  paper,  which  is  painstakingly  hand- 
ritten  in  tiny,  meticulous  writing;  her  obvi- 
is  care  is  rewarded  with  a  grade  of  100 
raw  led  at  the  top.  "I'm  a  little  obsessive- 
impulsive,"  she  concedes  sheepishly. 
Poit man  is  about  as  likely  to  cheat  on  a 
ipcr  as  she  is  to  become  a  Hell's  Angels' 
ker  chick.  For  lunch,  we  go  to  a  neighbor- 
ed pizza  parlor  with  her  best  friend  (who 
)rks  in  a  cancer-research  lab  in  her  spare 
ne).  But  service  is  slow,  and  Portman  be- 
ts to  fret  about  getting  back  on  time  for 
r  next  class.  Although  the  morning  gossip 
id  focused  on  the  fact  that  many  seniors 
s  cutting  virtually  every  class,  God  forbid 
at  Portman  should  miss  two  minutes  of 
vanced-placement  calculus. 
During  a  free  period,  she  and  her  friends 
ng  out  in  the  cafeteria,  where  the  talk  re- 
ives around  the  senior  prom.  Portman, 
10  doesn't  have  a  boyfriend,  has  a  lot  of 
y  friends  but  isn't  expecting  any  of  them 
escort  her.  "Boys  want  to  go  to  the  prom 
th  someone  they  can  fool  around  with," 
e  explains.  And  she  has  already  made  it 
:ar  that  that  someone  isn't  her. 

)  oilman  tries  hard  to  stay  true  to  her 
ideals.  Unlike  her  parents,  she  has  been 
/egetarian  since  she  was  8,  and  she's  grown 
icter  over  the  years,  eliminating  fish  when 
e  was  11  and  cheeses  when  she  was  15, 
cause  so  many  contain  rennet.  "It's  taken 
>m  animals'  stomachs,"  she  says  earnestly. 
Cutting  out  gelatin  was  hard  for  me— giving 
gummy  worms  and  Jell-O." 
That's  Natalie:  while  other  teen  idols 
>rry  about  giving  up  hard  drugs  and  stay- 
»  out  of  rehab,  Portman  allows  herself 
ly  a  moment  of  wistfulness  for  having  to 
ly  off  gummy  worms. 
So  is  she  a  goody-goody?  "I  would  nev- 
say  someone  else  is  bad  because  they 
i  something,  but  for  myself,  I'm  kind  of 
nservative,"  she  admits.  "I've  never  tried 
loking,  I  don't  drink,  I've  never  tried 
y  drugs.  I  don't  condemn  people  who 
>;  I've  just  never  wanted  to.  I  don't  really 
e  high-school  parties.  My  closest  friends 
i  very  straight,  compared  with  a  lot  of 
tier  kids.  It's  definitely  odd;  I've  proba- 
/  had  the  most  adult  experiences— I've 
en  working  since  I  was  11,  getting  paid— 
t  on  the  other  hand  there's  a  lot  of 
ings  I  haven't  experienced  that  a  lot  of 
tier  kids  have." 

Of  course,  all  this  leaves  any  adult  won- 
ring  how  Portman's  parents  managed  to 
;ate  this  paragon  of  wholesome  values  and 
optional  accomplishment.  "They're  not 
illy  strict;  they  just  don't  have  anything 
worry  about,"  she  muses.  "I'm  an  only 


child.  All  my  vacations  are  with  my  parents. 
You  really  learn  to  function  as  an  adult." 

In  fact,  she  is  a  curious  mixture.  In  some 
ways  Portman  has  seemed  like  a  minia- 
ture adult  for  years.  "She's  a  really  smart 
girl  who  has  had  a  very  rarefied  upbring- 
ing, who  has  been  raised  with  a  lot  of  con- 
fidence and  self-esteem,  so  she  seems  older 
than  she  is  in  many  ways,"  says  Susan 
Sarandon.  "I  felt  at  all  times  that  I  was 
working  with  an  equal.  She  has  a  natural 
grace  that  doesn't  make  her  seem  as  if  she's 
of  her  generation." 

And  yet  there  remains  something  oddly 
childlike  about  Portman.  One  night  she 
and  I  have  dinner  at  an  Italian  restaurant 
near  her  home,  where  the  only  person  to 
recognize  her  is  a  relative  who  happens  to 
be  dining  there.  When  Portman's  father 
comes  to  pick  her  up,  he  joins  us  for  coffee, 
and  he  and  Natalie  hold  hands  at  the  table. 
An  Israeli-born  doctor,  he  works  as  a  fertili- 
ty specialist  while  his  wife  occupies  herself 
as  a  full-time  mother. 

Portman  isn't  their  real  name;  Natalie 
took  her  grandmother's  maiden  name  as  a 
professional  pseudonym  to  protect  her  pri- 
vacy. Her  parents  are  very  insistent  about 
that— I'm  not  allowed  to  mention  their 
name,  the  town  they  live  in,  or  the  school 
Natalie  goes  to— and  they  are  even  hoping 
to  keep  her  choice  of  college  a  secret,  for 
"security  reasons"  (although  Jodie  Foster 
was  quite  open  about  going  to  Yale  and 
Brooke  Shields  never  hid  the  fact  that  she 
went  to  Princeton). 

Portman's  parents  also  work  hard  to  make 
sure  that  their  adored  daughter  doesn't  simu- 
late anything  on-screen  that  she  hasn't  al- 
ready experienced  in  her  own  life.  Portman, 
who  was  born  in  Israel,  was  first  discovered 
in  a  Long  Island  pizza  parlor,  where  she  was 
approached  by  a  Revlon  scout  who  wanted 
to  know  if  she  was  interested  in  modeling. 
She  wasn't,  but  the  encounter  led  to  her  ac- 
quiring an  agent,  and  she  soon  landed  the 
daunting  role  of  the  tough,  damaged  would- 
be  assassin  in  The  Professional. 

Her  parents  were  "very  worried"  when 
she  went  into  show  business,  she  says,  and 
they  are  still  extremely  protective.  "They 
talk  to  the  director  for  hours  before  every 
project  I  do,  to  make  sure  I'm  not  going 
to  be  doing  anything  that's  going  to  hurt 
me  in  my  personal  life,"  Portman  says. 
"Just  being  up  there  on-screen  and  larger 
than  life,  you  get  people  who  have  weird 
thoughts  about  you.  It's  hard  enough  be- 
ing in  the  public  eye  at  my  age." 

When  Wayne  Wang  chose  Portman  to 
play  the  daughter  in  Anywhere  hut  Here, 
her  parents  objected  to  a  scene  in  which 
the  girl  has  her  first  sexual  experience  with 
a  boy.  "At  one  point  her  parents  even  turned 
down  the  movie  because  of  that  scene.'' 


says  Wang.  "Everything  was  at  a  standstill; 
I  was  very  upset.  I  really  wanted  her.  So  we 
eventually  went  back  and  rewrote  the  scene. 
It's  not  explicit  now;  they  don't  have  sex  on- 
screen. Sometimes  I  think  Natalie's  parents 
were  overprotective,  but  if  I  look  at  it  from 
their  point  of  view,  in  this  industry  you  al- 
most need  to  overcompensate,  and  maybe 
that's  good.  If  I  had  a  daughter  like  Nat- 
alie, I  would  probably  do  exactly  what  her 
parents  are  doing." 

The  story  line  of  Anywhere  but  Here  pro- 
vides an  ironic  counterpoint  to  the 
changes  Natalie  is  facing  in  her  personal  life. 
"The  movie  is  about  letting  go,  about  letting 
your  daughter  live  her  life  at  some  point," 
Wang  explains.  "Natalie  is  a  disciplined  kid, 
but  there  are  moments  in  this  movie  when 
she  really  has  to  dig  deep  and  be  very  angry. 
That's  the  hardest  part  for  her.  She's  very 
controlled,  very  cerebral,  and  it's  harder  for 
her  to  access  the  anger  and  rebellion  and 
say,  'Let  me  go.'  There's  one  scene  in  the 
movie  where  she  had  to  do  that— it's  the  fi- 
nal dramatic  moment  between  mother  and 
daughter— and  we  did  a  lot  of  takes.  I  had  to 
keep  pushing;  we  shot  it  two  separate  times. 
We  just  had  to  keep  working  on  it." 

The  unusual  closeness  between  Natalie 
and  her  parents  makes  it  difficult  to  imagine 
this  hothouse  flower  striking  out  on  her 
own.  She  has  enjoyed  an  extraordinary  level 
of  support  in  everything  she  does;  her  moth- 
er has  always  accompanied  her  on  location, 
while  her  father  thinks  nothing  of  getting  up 
at  three  a.m.  to  help  her  study  for  an  exam. 

"My  parents  have  always  stressed  educa- 
tion over  success,  over  money,  over  every- 
thing," Portman  explains.  "I  grew  up  read- 
ing over  my  father's  shoulder,  watching  him 
study  for  his  exams.  I  have  a  strong  work 
ethic,  and  my  parents  have  also  passed 
down  a  love  of  learning  to  me.  I  really  en- 
joy it;  that's  why  I  do  well." 

The  family's  standards  are  high:  "If  I 
brought  home  a  94,  it  would  be  "Where  are 
the  other  six  points?'"  Portman  says.  "My 
father  expected  the  best  from  me." 

In  return,  she  thinks  the  world  of  her 
mother  and  father.  "My  parents  are  very 
sane,"  she  says.  "They  practice  what  they 
preach.  My  parents  can  say.  'Don't  drink,'  or 
'Don't  do  drugs,'  because  they  don't.  There's 
an  honesty  I  have  with  my  parents  that  a 
lot  of  kids  can't  have.  I'll  hang  out  with  my 
parents  on  a  Friday  night  when  my  friends 
are  going  to  a  party  I  don't  want  to  go  to." 

Not  surprisingly,  the  family  dynamic  has 
generated  talk  in  the  entertainment  in- 
dustry, but  those  who  know  Portman  best 
feel  that  her  parents  get  a  bum  rap.  "Some- 
one in  the  business  had  tried  to  warn  me 
about  her  parents  being  invasive,  but  they 
gave  her  space  when  she  needed  it."  says 


\Y     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


oniiKin 


James  I  apine,  the  directoi  ol  The  Diary  oj 
Anne  Frank.  "They're  very  down-to-earth 
people.  I  found  them  to  be  concerned  par- 
ents, not  stage  parents." 

Hie  designer  Isaac  Mizrahi,  who  used 
Portman  as  the  muse  for  his  "Isaac"  ad 
campaign,  had  a  similar  experience.   "1 

heard  her  parents  were  very  overprotective, 

that  thc\  watch  every  single  step  of  what  she 
docs,  but  when  I  met  them  I  realized  they 
were  just  concerned  with  their  darling 
daughter."  he  says.  "They  value  her,  and 
they  weren't  going  to  let  her  go  down  the 
scary  path  so  many  actresses  go  down.  I 
think  that's  why  Natalie  feels  lighthearted: 
she  feels  cared  lor.  I  think  her  parents  are 
doing  everything  right.  She's  sort  of  a  mira- 
cle, that  she  hasn't  become  this  egomaniacal 
little  bitch  like  the  kid  stars  you  hear  about. 
She  was  an  absolute  dream  to  work  with." 

Most  of  Portman's  colleagues  end  up  be- 
ing amazed  at  how  sensible  she  is.  "She's 
so  centered,  so  together."  says  Lapine.  "She's 
somebody  you  can  speak  your  mind  to,  be- 
cause she  won't  have  a  meltdown.  She  has 
a  kind  of  maturity  many  adult  actors  don't 
have." 

And  unlike  most  actors,  who  claim  (usu- 
ally falsely)  never  to  read  their  own  reviews 
and  who  delight  in  trashing  the  critics.  Port- 
man  is  even  philosophical  about  bad  no- 
tices. "When  it's  a  good  review,  it's  a  great 
feeling,  because  you  feel  like  people  under- 
stood what  you're  doing,"  she  says.  "Obvi- 
ously it  doesn't  feel  good  to  see  something 
negative,  but  when  it's  bad,  sometimes  it's 
helpful,  because  I  do  respect  those  people's 
opinions.  I  never  get  too  offended  by  it." 

Indeed,  Portman  thinks  that  what's  note- 
worthy is  not  how  mature  she  is,  but  how 


immature  man)  <>!  hei  peers  are.  "I  think  a 

lot  of  people  my  age  are  behind,"  she  says, 
sounding  as  matter-of-fact  and  detached  as 
if  she  were  discussing  the  weather.  "They're 
less  mature  than  they  should  be.  A  Kit  ol 
kids  I  know  have  kind  of  been  handed 
everything.  I  didn't  come  from  a  hard- 
knock  life,  but  l'\e  worked  hard.  Most  of 
the  people  where  I  live  get  their  car  on  (hen 
16th  birthday.  Most  of  them  don't  really 
care  about  school.  I  see  a  lot  of  people 
who  seem  to  have  no  interests.  There's  a 
lack  of  individualism.  They're  born  into  a 
world  where  you  don't  have  to  prove  any- 
thing to  anybody.  A  lot  of  families  have  in- 
herited their  businesses;  others  have  worked 
so  hard  they  want  their  families  to  be  com- 
fortable, so  they're  not  pushing  their  kids. 
I've  gravitated  toward  friends  that  are  more 
rounded  -toward  people  with  ambitions." 

Even  the  entertainment  business  has 
failed  to  undermine  Portman's  values.  "Peo- 
ple think  the  film  industry  is  going  to  cor- 
rupt me,  but  I  feel  like  it's  kept  me  more 
innocent,  in  a  way,"  she  says.  "I  wasn't 
really  home  when  my  friends  were  trying 
pot  for  the  first  time.  I  was  always  around 
adults  who  wouldn't  smoke  or  curse  or  do 
anything  like  that  around  me.  I  don't  do 
things  that  are  dangerous  to  myself.  I  don't 
want  to  hurt  myself." 

The  combination  of  Portman's  intelligence, 
looks,  talent,  and  maturity  has  awed 
most  of  the  adults  who  have  worked  with 
her.  "That  little  pip-squeak  Natalie— the 
one  who's  going  to  be  my  boss  in  five 
years?"  says  Ted  Demme,  the  director  of 
Beautiful  Girls.  "She's  going  to  be  running 
a  studio  and  acting  and  producing  and  do- 
ing whatever  she  wants.  I  don't  see  any  lim- 
its for  her— and  you  can't  say  that  about 
many  people.  If  she  told  me,  'I'm  quitting 


acting  and  I'm  going  to  be  president.'  Ij 
believe  her  II  she  told  me,  I'm  going  In  I 
a  brain  Surgeon,'  or  'I'm  going  to  be  an  li 

raeli  paratrooper'  I  would  believe  anythuj 
she  told  me." 

"She's  getting  ready  to  be  a  huge  star 
says  Michael  Rapaport.  who  was  Tim  H 
ton's  "alcoholic  high-school  buddy  shit-fo 
brains.''  as  Natalie's  character  describe 
him.  in  Beautiful  Girls.  "I've  already  tol 
her  to  remember  the  little  people  she  use 
to  know  when  it  comes  to  giving  out  parts 

When  George  Lucas  cast  her  as  Quee 
Amidala,  he  exacted  a  three-picture  comm 
ment  from  her,  so  Natalie  already  know 
she'll  be  filming  new  Star  Wars  movies  du 
ing  the  summer  of  2000  and  the  summer  ( 
2002.  Other  than  that,  however,  the  future 
an  open  question.  "Huge  star"  may  be  on 
job  opening,  but  there  are  lots  of  others;  s 
far  her  career  aspirations  have  included  do 
tor,  astronaut,  and  Broadway  dancer. 

"I'm  taking  it  day  by  day,"  Natalie  say: 
"Right  now  I  like  acting,  but  if  somethin 
else  sparks  my  interest  in  college,  I'll  d 
that.  It's  so  limiting  to  say.  This  is  it  for  th 
rest  of  my  life.'  There  are  so  many  thing 
that  interest  me— I  love  math,  science,  litei 
ature.  languages." 

And  so  far  acting  hasn't  cost  her  an> 
thing.  "I've  had  really  good  experiences 
she  says.  "I  haven't  had  any  bad  exper 
ences  with  anyone  I've  worked  with,  actor 
or  directors.  I  can't  think  of  anything  I'vi 
missed  out  on.  So  I  missed  some  TV 
watching  hours?"  She  rolls  her  eyes.  "I  fee  t. 
like  I'm  having  the  best  of  both  worlds.' 

She  grins,  and  as  she  looks  up  at  m< 
through  those  long  dark  eyelashes,  it's  impos 
sible  to  tell  whether  her  wide,  doelike  gazt  | 
betrays  a  hint  of  guile  or  is  purely  innocent 
"It's  nice  to  be  able  to  use  the  business  rathe: 
than  have  it  use  you."  she  says  demurely.  D   < 


Welty 


continued  from  page  183  supple  images. 
One  day  after  a  winter  storm  in  Jackson— the 
first  real  one  here  in  years— she  recalled  for 
her  friend  Hunter  Cole  the  first  time  she  saw 
snow,  from  her  elementary-school  windows 
on  North  Congress  Street.  It  was  not  cold 
enough  for  it  to  stick,  she  recalled,  so  the 
teacher  raised  a  window,  took  off  her  cape, 
and  extended  it  outside.  Then  the  woman 
walked  hurriedly  about  the  classroom  with 
the  garment,  showing  the  young  writer  and 
her  contemporaries  the  glistening  snowflakes. 

She  is  not,  by  birth,  what  is  called  here 
"Old  Jackson."  Her  father,  a  northerner 
originally  from  Ohio,  was  the  top  man  in  a 
fledgling  insurance  company.  Her  southern 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


mother  had  been  born  in  West  Virginia.  "I 
was  always  aware."  Eudora  has  written, 
"that  there  were  two  sides  to  most  ques- 
tions." Before  they  built  the  house  in  Bel- 
haven  the  Weltys  lived  on  North  Congress 
Street,  right  down  from  her  elementary 
school.  (The  writer  Richard  Ford  later  grew 
up  directly  across  from  the  old  Welty 
house.)  The  family  was  by  no  means  rich 
but  lived  comfortably,  and  Eudora's  parents 
were  particularly  attentive  to  her.  In  One 
Writer's  Beginnings,  Eudora  wrote  of  morn- 
ings in  the  household  of  her  childhood. 
"When  I  was  young  enough  to  still  spend  a 
long  time  buttoning  my  shoes  in  the  morn- 
ing," she  began,  "I'd  listen  toward  the  hall: 
Daddy  upstairs  was  shaving  in  the  bath- 
room and  Mother  downstairs  was  frying 
the  bacon.  They  would  begin  whistling 
back  and  forth  to  each  other  up  and  down 


the  stairwell.  My  father  would  whistle  his  | 
phrase,  my  mother  would  try  to  whistle 
then  hum  hers  back.  It  was  their  duet 
drew  my  buttonhook  in  and  out  and  lis 
tened  to  it— I  knew  it  was  The  Merry  Wid 
ow.'  The  difference  was,  their  song  almost 
floated  with  laughter:  how  different  from 
the  record,  which  growled  from  the  begin-  K 
ning,  as  if  the  Victrola  were  only  slowly  be- 
ing wound  up." 

Her  father,  Christian  Webb  Welty,  had  "an 
almost  childlike  love  of  the  ingenious."  Eu- 
dora believes  he  owned  the  first  Dictaphone 
in  town  and  he  put  the  earphones  over  her 
ears  to  let  her  discover  what  she  could  hear 
He  also  owned  one  of  the  early  automobiles, 
in  which  the  family  made  long  journeys  on 
perilous  gravel  roads  to  Ohio  and  West  Vir 
ginia.  Her  father  told  Eudora  and  her  two 
younger  brothers.  Walter  and  Edward,  that  if 

MAY      1999 


ic\  were  ever  lost  in  a  strange  land  to  look 
r  where  the  sky  is  brightest  along  the  hori- 
>n.  "That  reflects  the  nearest  river.  Strike 
jt  for  a  river  and  you  will  find  habitation." 
his  helped  provide  her  with  what  she  terms 
i  si  rong  meteorological  sensibility."  As  for 
:r  mother.  Chestina  Welty.  "valiance  was  in 
:r  very  fibre." 

rhe  Weltys  loved  literature.  They  had  an 
encyclopedia  in  the  dining  room,  and 
someone  had  a  question  at  the  table, 
imeone  else  was  always  jumping  up  to 
■ove  the  other  right  or  wrong.  As  a  girl, 
udora's  mother  had  been  given  a  com- 
ete  set  of  Charles  Dickens's  novels  as  a 
ward  for  having  her  hair  cut.  and  when 
e  Welty  home  caught  fire  one  night  he- 
re Eudora  was  born,  Mrs.  Welty— on 
utches  at  the  time— returned  to  the  house 
id  threw  all  24  volumes  one  by  one  out 
e  window  for  Mr.  Welty  to  catch. 
It  was  a  disappointment  to  the  young 
Idora  to  discover  that  storybooks  had 
:en  written  by  people,  "that  books  were 
>t  natural  wonders,  coming  up  of  them- 
lves  like  grass."  She  was  in  love  with 
>oks,  their  words,  their  smell,  their  covers 
id  bindings.  The  public  library  was  on  the 
her  side  of  the  state  capitol  from  her 
>me,  and  on  her  trips  to  get  books  she 
■old  glide  along  the  marble  floors  of  the 
pitol  on  roller  skates.  This  produced 
ery  desirable  echoes." 
At  the  library  itself,  Mrs.  Calloway,  a 
tchlike  lady  with  a  dragon  eye,  intimidat- 
l  the  children.  But  she  could  not  inhibit 
idora's  reading,  for  her  mother  had  told 
e  librarian:  "Eudora  is  nine  years  old  and 
is  my  permission  to  read  any  book  she 
ints  from  the  shelves,  children  or  adult, 
th  the  exception  of  Elsie  Dinsmore. " 
She  was  absorbed  by  the  stories  all 
ound  her,  the  eternal  and  ubiquitous  Mis- 
isippi  storytelling  she  heard  from  family, 
ighbors,  maids.  Preparing  for  a  Sunday- 
ternoon  ride,  she  would  settle  onto  the 
ckseat  between  her  mother  and  a  friend 
d  command,  "Now  talk!" 
At  the  time,  Jackson  girls  took  piano 
isons  as  a  matter  of  course.  Eudora's  own 
icher,  "Old  Jackson"  to  the  core,  dipped 
r  pen  in  ink  and  wrote  "Practice!"  on  her 
eet  music  with  a  P  that  resembled  a  cat's 
:e  with  a  long  tail,  and  slapped  her  fingers 
th  a  flyswatter  when  she  made  a  mistake. 

j^ven  as  a  child  she  was  drawn  to  the 
-ibizarre,  the  grotesque,  the  phantasma- 
ric.  "This  being  the  state  capital,  we  had 
the  state  institutions  in  Jackson— blind. 
af  and  dumb,  insane,"  she  once  observed 
me.  "Made  for  good  characters."  There 
is  also  the  occasional  society  murder, 
lich  Eudora  found  singularly  fascinating 
le  recalls  the  Mississippi  matron  whom  1 


myself  had  heard  about  who  was  convicted 
for  the  murder  of  her  mother;  part  of  the 
corpse  was  found,  but  not  all  of  it.  She  was 
sent  to  Whitfield,  the  asylum.  Eudora  and 
all  of  us  heard  the  stories  of  the  bridge 
games  the  murderess  played  with  other 
proper  ladies  confined  there  for  alcoholism. 
One  afternoon  one  of  the  ladies  abruptly 
tossed  down  her  bridge  hand  and  said, 
"Not  another  card  will  I  play  until  you  tell 
me  what  you  did  with  the  rest  of  your 
mother." 

In  Eudora's  childhood  years,  the  two 
Jackson  newspapers  published  the  honor 
rolls  and  individual  grades  of  all  the  honor 
students.  Also,  the  city  fathers  gave  the  hon- 
or children  free  season  tickets  to  the  baseball 
games  of  the  noble  Jackson  Senators  of 
the  Class  B  Cotton  States  League.  Eudora 
adored  Red  McDermott,  the  Senators'  third- 
baseman,  and  offered  him  her  documents  at- 
testing to  her  100s  in  all  her  subjects,  even 
attendance  and  deportment.  At  age  12  she 
won  the  Jackie  Mackie  Jingle  contest,  spon- 
sored by  the  Mackie  Pine  Oil  Company  of 
Covington,  Louisiana;  the  company  presi- 
dent sent  her  a  $25  check  and  said  he 
hoped  she  would  "improve  American  poet- 
ry to  such  an  extent  as  to  win  fame." 

Eudora  spent  two  years  in  the  little  town 
of  Columbus,  Mississippi— Tennessee 
Williams's  birthplace— at  the  Mississippi 
State  College  for  Women.  Although  "the 
W"  as  it  is  called,  was  impoverished,  ne- 
glected, and  overcrowded,  Eudora  remem- 
bers it  as  a  place  of  great  intellectual  stimu- 
lation, with  a  dedicated  cadre  of  female 
teachers  who  taught  without  pay  for  months 
during  the  Depression  when  the  state  could 
not  pay  their  salaries.  The  college  brought 
together  1,200  girls  from  every  corner  of 
Mississippi.  They  all  wore  identical  uni- 
forms, but  Eudora  learned  to  tell  where  a 
girl  had  grown  up  from  the  way  she  talked, 
ate,  or  entered  a  classroom.  She  once  told 
me  that  she  could  distinguish  a  girl  from 
the  Delta  by  the  way  she  walked. 

Eudora  became  a  cartoonist  for  the 
school  paper  and  was  chosen  fire  chief  of 
Hastings  Hall.  At  night  she  frequently 
sneaked  out  of  the  dorm  to  go  downtown, 
where  the  action  was,  and,  on  one  such 
evening,  won  a  Charleston  contest  at  the 
Princess  Theater.  Elizabeth  Spencer  first 
met  Eudora  some  years  after  this  when  the 
former  was  a  college  student.  "I  was  in  great 
awe  of  her  talent,"  Elizabeth  remembers, 
"but  I  was  not  aware  of  her  high-flying  sense 
of  humor."  Then  one  afternoon  the  two  of 
them  were  at  a  post  office  and  noticed  a 
tacked-up  poster  proclaiming:  no  loithring 
or  soliciting.  "Eudora  saw  it,"  Elizabeth 
recalls,  "and  said,  'Let's  loiter  and  solicit." 
When  Elizabeth  said  O.K.,  Eudora  de- 
clared, "Then  you  solicit  while  I  loiter." 


Eudora's  father,  the  northerner,  wanted 
his  daughter  to  spend  her  last  two  college 
years  at  some  distinguished  university  up 
North,  and  in  1927  she  enrolled  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wisconsin.  Her  mother  was  already 
encouraging  her  aspirations  to  become  a 
writer,  and  Mr.  Welty  gave  his  daughter  her 
first  typewriter,  a  little  red  Royal  Portable, 
which  she  took  with  her  to  Madison.  To  get 
her  through  the  harsh  winters  he  also 
bought  her  a  possum  coat  at  Marshall  Field 
in  Chicago.  Many  of  the  students,  she  re- 
calls, had  raccoon  coats,  but  her  family 
could  not  afford  such  luxury. 

At  first,  the  Midwest  frightened  her.  Years 
later  she  wrote  her  longtime  agent,  Diar- 
muid  Russell,  about  her  first  months  above 
the  Mason-Dixon  line:  "I  was  very  timid 
and  shy,  younger  than  the  rest  and  those 
people  up  there  seemed  to  me  like  sticks  of 
flint  that  live  in  the  icy  world.  I  am  afraid 
of  flintiness — I  had  to  penetrate  that. ...  I 
used  to  be  in  a  kind  of  wandering  daze,  I 
would  wander  down  to  Chicago  and  through 
the  stores,  I  could  feel  such  a  heavy  heart 
inside  me.  It  was  more  than  the  pangs  of 
growing  up,  much  more.  It  was  some  kind 
of  desire  to  be  shown  that  the  human  spir- 
it was  not  like  that  shivery  winter  in  Wis- 
consin, that  the  opposite  to  all  this  existed 
in  full." 

Her  father,  concerned  about  his  daugh- 
ter's future,  persuaded  her  to  go  to  gradu- 
ate school  in  business.  She  immediately 
chose  Columbia  University  because  she 
wanted  to  live  in  New  York  for  a  year.  She 
studied  typing  for  a  while,  "so  I  could  be  a 
secretary  and  make  a  living."  When  she 
had  to  pick  a  major  subject  she  selected  ad- 
vertising, "which  wasn't  awfully  good,  be- 
cause all  at  once,  when  the  Depression  hit, 
nobody  had  any  money  to  advertise  with. 
For  that  matter,  nobody  had  any  money  to 
do  anything  with."  During  the  Manhattan 
winter  her  mother  sent  her  boxes  of  camel- 
lias to  remind  her  of  home. 

In  1931,  shortly  after  Eudora  returned  to 
Jackson  from  New  York  City,  her  father 
died  of  leukemia.  Her  mother  was  left  with 
two  sons  in  high  school  and  college,  so  Eu- 
dora worked  at  whatever  she  could  do.  Her 
first  job,  at  age  22,  was  at  a  local  radio  sta- 
tion headquartered  in  the  clock  tower  of 
Jackson's  first  skyscraper:  the  Lamar  Life 
building,  which  had  been  built  by  her  fa- 
ther's company, 

As  part  of  her  job  she  wrote  the  radio 
schedule  to  mail  out  to  listeners  and  also 
sent  fake  letters  to  the  station  which  were  to 
be  read  on  the  air:  "Dear  WJDX.  I  love 
the  opera  on  Saturday.  Don't  ever  take  it 
away!"  She  remembered  the  office  as  being 
"as  big  as  a  chicken  coop."  with  just 
enough  room  for  Mr.  Wiley  Harris,  the  an- 
nouncer and  manager,  and  herself  He 
would  go  up  into  the  clock  lower  to  clean 


AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Welt 


oul  the  canary's  cage,  and  she  would  yell 

"Mr.  Harris!  Mr.  Harris!"  because  n  was 
time  fbi  him  to  announce  the  call  letters  of 
the  station.  The  absentminded  Mr.  Harris 
would  come  down  and  say,  "Tins  is  Station 
. . .  uh,  this  . . .  This  is  Station  ..."  I  udora 
would  write  the  call  letters  WJDX  on  a 
sheet  of  cardboard  and  hold  it  up  lor  him. 

Later,  still  during  the  Depression,  she 
was  hired  as  a  publicity  agent,  junior 
grade,  with  the  Works  Progress  Administra- 
tion. She  visited  the  farm-to-market  roads  m 
Mississippi  and  interviewed  people  living 
along  them.  She  rode  around  on  bookmo- 
bile routes  and  helped  put  up  booths  at 
county  fans.  She  visited  landing  fields  being 
hacked  out  of  cow  pastures,  juvenile  courts, 
the  scene  of  the  devastating  Tupelo  tornado, 
and  even  a  project  teaching  Braille  to  the 
blind.  She  went  mostly  by  bus  and  stayed 
in  the  old  small-town  hotels.  At  night,  under 
a  squeaky  electric  tan.  she  wrote  up  the 
projects  for  the  county  weeklies.  The  De- 
pression, she  would  remember,  "was  not  a 
noticeable  phenomenon  in  the  poorest  state 
in  the  Union." 

For  her  own  gratification,  she  began  tak- 
ing photographs,  using  an  old-fashioned 
Kodak.  The  Standard  Photo  Company  of 
Jackson  developed  her  film,  and  she  print- 
ed it  at  night  in  her  kitchen  at  home.  She 
says  that  her  years  of  "snapshooting,"  as 
she  calls  it,  helped  her  arrive  at  the  percep- 
tion that  she  must  go  beyond  silent  images 
to  the  slower  voice  of  words. 

"Mostly  I  remember  things  vividly,"  she 
says  of  the  years  she  spent  taking  pictures. 
"I  remember  how  people  looked,  just  peo- 
ple standing  against  the  sky  sometimes,  at 
the  end  of  a  day's  work.  Something  like 
that  is  indelible  to  me.  In  taking  all  these 
pictures,  I  was  attended,  1  know  now,  by  an 
angel— a  presence  of  trust. ...  It  is  a  trust 
that  dates  the  pictures,  more  than  the  van- 
ished years." 

Soon  her  stories  started  to  come  to  her. 
Her  very  first,  in  1936,  was  "Death  of  a 
Traveling  Salesman."  published  in  an  ob- 
scure Ohio  quarterly  called  Manuscript. 
When  she  was  awarded  a  Guggenheim  fel- 
lowship in  1942,  she  told  a  friend's  aunt  in 
Jackson  her  news.  The  aunt  responded,  "A 
Guggenheim  what?"  "I  think  she  thought 
it  was  a  hat,"  Eudora  said. 

By  1944  she  had  published  A  Curtain  of 
Green  and  The  Robber  Bridegroom,  and  for 
six  months  of  that  year  she  lived  again  in 
New  York  City.  Robert  Van  Gelder  of  The 
New  York  Times  Book  Review  had  inter- 
viewed her  in  1942  and  later  offered  her  a 
job.  "Can  you  imagine?"  she  remembers. 
"Of  course,  I  immediately  accepted  and 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


then  phoned  my  mother  in  Mississippi.  She- 
was  glad  I'd  found  a  job.  because  they 
weren't  easy  to  come  by  during  the  war." 
Bui  she  was  not  entirely  comfortable.  "I 
didn't  want  to  give  a  book  a  bad  review. 
No  nulla  what  n  is.  it's  a  year  oul  of 
somebody's  life."  She  used  the  pseudonym 
of  Michael  Ravenna  when  reviewing  war 
books,  and  when  readers  wrote  to  Michael 
Ravenna,  she  replied  that  he  was  away  at 
the  front  line. 

Always  unabashedly  stageslruck.  Eudora 
could  look  outside  her  office  window  and 
see  the  performers  she  most  admired  arriv- 
ing at  rehearsals  and  performances.  Mae 
West  was  rehearsing  Catherine  Was  Great 
just  next  door  and  Eudora  often  slipped  in 
the  back  to  watch.  "I'd  watch  during  my 
lunch  hour.  Nobody  seemed  to  mind.  And 
I  was  in  heaven." 

In  1949,  with  a  $5,000  advance  on  a  new 
book  and  a  second  Guggenheim,  she 
made  her  first  trip  to  Europe  and  fell  in 
love  with  Ireland,  as  southerners  often  do. 
She  walked  alone  on  its  country  roads  and 
hid  under  hedges  when  it  rained.  One  of 
her  writing  idols  was  Elizabeth  Bowen, 
whom  she  visited  in  County  Cork.  Later,  at 
Cambridge,  she  lunched  with  one  of  her 
own  admirers,  E.  M.  Forster,  and  became 
one  of  the  few  women  to  enter  the  hall  of 
Peterhouse  College.  Eudora  recalls,  "They 
were  so  dear  the  way  they  told  me:  they 
said,  'Miss  Welty,  you  are  invited  to  come 
to  this,  but  we  must  tell  you  that  we  debat- 
ed for  a  long  time  about  whether  or  not  we 
should  ask  you.'" 

Years  later  Eudora— with  29  other  wom- 
en, including  Helen  Hayes,  Lauren  Bacall, 
and  Toni  Morrison— was  invited  to  become 
a  member  of  the  Players  Club  on  Gramer- 
cy  Park,  the  prestigious  establishment  for 
theater  people.  They  were  the  first  female 
members.  "Let's  invade  them,  girls,"  Eu- 
dora announced  to  the  assembled  compan- 
ions at  cocktail  hour. 

By  1955  she  had  published  four  short- 
story  collections,  a  novel,  and  two  novel- 
las. For  the  next  15  years,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  three  short  stories  in  1963,  1966, 
and  1969,  until  the  novel  Losing  Battles, 
there  was  silence.  She  was  virtually  unpub- 
lished. These  were  difficult  years  personal- 
ly. Her  mother  had  serious  eye  surgery, 
and  as  her  complaints  multiplied,  her  con- 
dition gradually  deteriorated.  Eudora  had 
to  take  care  of  her;  there  were  no  others  to 
do  this  except  salaried  outsiders.  Eudora's 
brother  Walter,  six  years  younger  than  she, 
also  became  very  ill  at  the  age  of  40  with 
heart  problems  compounded  by  arthritis. 
"I'm  so  ashamed  of  not  producing  any- 
thing," Eudora  wrote  Diarmuid  Russell.  "I 
should  think  all  of  my  friends  would  have 
given  me  up." 


Waltei  died  in  1959,  Eventually,  Eud< 
was  forced  to  put  her  mother  in  a  nurs 
home  in  Ya/oo  City,  nearly  50  mi 
away.  Eudora  drove  there  and  back  eve 
day  of  the  week  for  more  than  a  year 
read  to  her  and  help  look  after  her.  On  tl 
long  drives  she  sometimes  made  notes  li 
Losing  Battles  in  a  notebook  propped  c 
the  steering  wheel.  Her  mother  and  h 
other  brother,  Edward,  died  lour  days  apa 
in  1966. 

To  help  pay  lor  the  nursing  home,  E 
dora  had  to  take  a  job  teaching  a  writir 
workshop  at  Millsaps  College  in  Jacksoi 
She  had  16  talented  students  screened  \ 
the  English  Department.  When  the  no 
famous  writer  called  the  roll  for  the  fir 
time,  the  students  realized  she  was  moi 
nervous  than  they  were.  "We  hadn't 
pected  that,"  says  John  Little,  who  was  on 
of  the  students  and  later  became  direct 
of  the  writing  program  at  the  University  ( 
North  Dakota.  "We  didn't  know  this  wi 
the  first  college  class  she  ever  taught.  W 
didn't  know  she  was  intensely  shy."  Afte 
the  roll  call,  she  read  Dylan  Thomas's 
Child's  Christmas  in  Wales."  After  the  stor 
the  students  sat  in  stone  silence.  Eudor 
looked  at  her  watch;  they  looked  at  their 
Finally,  Tom  Royals— now  a  lawyer  in  Jack 
son— rescued  the  day.  "Miss  Welty,"  he  said 
"since  this  is  the  first  class,  we  don't  hav 
to  stay  the  whole  two  hours."  Her  sigh  o 
relief  was  audible. 

After  a  few  classes  they  tried  a  more  ca 
sual  setting— a  Sunday-night  social  at  some 
one's  house.  John  Little  got  there  late;  h 
was  carrying  a  case  of  cold  Budweiser  oi 
his  shoulder.  The  hostess  frowned  at  th< 
beer  and  sent  the  young  man  to  the  kitchei 
with  it.  The  stifling  silence  from  the  living 
room  matched  that  of  the  classroom 
"Anybody  want  a  Bud?,"  Little  shouted 
"Please,"  came  one  small  voice  from  the  si 
lence.  It  was  Eudora's.  "The  sight  of  Miss 
Welty  drinking  that  beer  had  the  sound  o 
ice  breaking,"  Little  says. 

Eudora's  closest  friend,  in  almost  every 
way  a  sister,  was  Charlotte  Capers,  whe 
died  two  years  ago  at  age  83.  Charlotte,  au- 
thor of  an  essay  collection  entitled  The  Ca- 
pers Papers,  and  a  friend  of  my  own  fami- 
ly's, was  a  descendant  of  Episcopal  bishops 
and  Sewanee  College  presidents,  and  one 
of  the  brightest,  wackiest  women  on  earth. 
To  each  other  they  were  "Cha-Cha,"  pro- 
nounced with  a  soft  eh,  and  "Dodo,"  like 
the  note.  Once  not  long  before  her  death 
when  she  and  another  companion  were 
helping  Eudora  into  a  four-door  sedan, 
Capers  said,  "Let's  get  Dodo  . . .  into  the 
fo'do'." 

Up  until  fairly  recently,  Eudora  drove  an 
ancient  Oldsmobile  Cutlass,  and  the  sight 
of  her,  barely  able  to  see  over  the  steering 

MAY      19  9  9 


JVell' 


heel,  making  her  way  to  Parkin's  Phar- 
acy  to  buy  The  New  York  Times,  was  as 
miliar  as  another  picture  we  all  have  in 
jr  memories,  Eudora's  profile  through 
e  open  windows  of  her  second  floor,  as 
ie  sat  at  her  writing  desk.  She  always 
rehired  that  her  work  made  her  happy 
id  fulfilled.  With  short  stories  she  always 
ied  to  get  down  a  first  draft  sponta- 
:ously,  often  in  a  single  day's  work.  "Af- 
r  that,"  she  says,  "I  revised  with  scissors 
id  pins.  Pasting  is  too  slow  and  you  can't 
ido  it,  but  with  pins  you  can  move 
ings  from  anywhere  to  anywhere,  and 
at's  what  I  really  love  doing— putting 
ings  in  their  best  and  proper  place,  re- 
eling things  at  the  time  when  they  mat- 
r  most.  Often  I  shift  things  from  the  very 
iginning  to  the  very  end.  Small  things— 
ie  fact,  one  word— but  things  important 


to  me.  It's  possible  I  have  a  reverse  mind, 
and  do  things  backwards,  being  a  broken 
left-hander." 

Because  of  her  health,  Eudora  has  a 
hard  time  writing  now.  "My  body  doesn't 
help  me  anymore,"  she  tells  me,  quoting  a 
friend. 

Eudora  was  a  tall  woman  in  her  prime, 
but  osteoporosis  and  a  compression  frac- 
ture in  her  back  eight  years  ago  have  left 
their  mark.  She  has  arthritis  in  her  hands 
and  can  no  longer  use  a  typewriter.  Some 
years  ago,  the  New  Stage,  a  community  the- 
ater group  in  Jackson,  had  a  rummage  sale. 
Eudora  drove  over  in  her  old  car  and  took 
a  half-dozen  handblown  Czechoslovak 
Easter  eggs  and  an  old  Royal  typewriter 
in  its  original  travel  case.  It  was  the  type- 
writer her  father  had  given  her  years  before, 
the  typewriter  on  which  she  had  written 
her  novels  and  stories  since  the  1930s. 
Jack  Stevens,  an  actor,  bought  it  for  $10. 
Later  he  donated  it  to  the  State  Archives. 


She  laments  not  having  direct  access  to 
the  written  page  as  she  once  did,  in  the 
days  when  we  all  watched  her  working  as 
we  walked  or  drove  past  the  house.  Di- 
rectly across  the  street  from  the  Welty 
home  was  the  music  building  of  Belhaven 
College,  and  from  the  practice  rooms  the 
sounds  of  piano  music  would  drift  across 
Pinehurst  Street,  keeping  her  company 
through  the  long  and  solitary  hours  at  the 
old  Royal.  "Though  I  was  as  constant  in 
my  work  as  the  students  were,"  she  has 
written,  "subconsciously  I  must  have  been 
listening  to  them,  following  them. ...  I  re- 
alized that  each  practice  session  reached 
me  as  an  outpouring.  And  those  longings, 
so  expressed,  so  insistent,  called  up  my 
longings  unexpressed.  I  began  to  hear,  in 
what  kept  coming  across  the  street  into 
the  room  where  I  typed,  the  recurring 
dreams  of  youth,  inescapable,  never  to  be 
renounced,  naming  themselves  over  and 
over  again."  □ 


larden 


KTINUED     from     PAGF     177     SUperStarS — 

Itra  Violet,  Sylvia  Miles,  and  drag  queens 
ch  as  Holly  Woodlawn— hung  out  in  the 
ck.  The  heavy  hitters  were  apt  to  refer  to 
arhol  as  "Wendy  Airhole,"  and  to  his  as- 
ciate.  Bob  Colacello,  then  editor  of  Inter- 
•w,  as  "Kooky  Jello." 
The  heady  60s  combination  of  sex, 
ugs,  and  rock  'n'  roll  is  what  fueled  the 
nativity  at  Max's.  At  first  it  was  primarily 
artists'  hangout.  Later,  musicians  per- 
rmed  in  the  upstairs  room.  Bruce 
ringsteen,  Iggy  Pop,  Billy  Joel,  Alice 
>oper,  the  Velvet  Underground,  and 
nky  Friedman  and  his  Texas  Jewboys 
:re  just  a  few  of  those  who  appeared 
;re.  The  rock  'n'  rollers  and  the  artists 
t  along  marvelously  together.  Max's  was 
;  only  place  in  New  York  where  it  was 
ssible  to  hear  great  music,  get  infinite 
:dit,  score  drugs,  and  make  out  there 
d  then  with  the  gorgeous  groupies  who 
■onged  the  place.  The  waitresses  in  their 
Ie  black  miniskirts  and  black  tops  were 
major  part  of  the  attraction— "more  ap- 
tizing  than  the  food,"  Dennis  Hopper 
d.  According  to  Yvonne  Sewall-Ruskin, 
10  lived  with  the  proprietor,  Mickey 
iskin,  the  waitresses  "were  treated  like 
lebrities  instead  of  indentured  ser- 
nts."  They  made  so  much  money  that 
me  of  them  went  to  Europe  when  they 
d  a  few  days  off.  The  life  and  soul  of 
:se  beauties  was  an  adventurous  girl 
med  Helen  Harrington,  an  aspiring 
inter  who  had  swept  in  from  Morocco, 
arden  was  very  taken  with  her.  They 


were  married  in  1967.  Despite  sporadic 
separations  (then  as  now  Helen  was  also 
a  character  to  be  reckoned  with),  they  are 
still  very  much  together.  Now  that  their 
two  daughters  are  away  at  college,  Helen 
has  more  time  to  devote  to  her  own  work 
and  to  travel. 

Helen  figures  repeatedly  in  Marden's 
imagery.  The  year  of  their  marriage, 
he  paid  tribute  to  her  in  a  work  entitled 
For  Helen,  which  consists  of  two  panels 
that  are  both  five  feet  nine  inches  in  height, 
as  is  Helen  (Marden  is  five  feet  eight  and  a 
half),  and  painted  a  wonderful  orificial 
pink.  (Helen  claims  that  the  pink  was  in- 
spired by  a  color  Marden  had  never  seen— 
the  color  of  the  wet  sand  at  low  tide  in 
Cornwall— which  she  had  described  to 
him.)  Less  than  a  year  later,  after  Helen 
temporarily  deserted  him,  Marden  dedicat- 
ed seven  more  of  these  five-foot-nine  paint- 
ings to  her,  this  time  single-panel  ones, 
which  are  as  obdurate  as  a  slammed  door. 
These  are  known  as  the  Back  Series,  to  sig- 
nify that  she  had  turned  her  back  on  him. 
(A  photograph  of  Helen's  naked  back  fig- 
ured on  the  poster  for  the  exhibition  of  this 
series.) 

Before  Marden  married  Helen,  he  had 
found  inspiration  in  another  of  Max's  girls: 
Nico,  Andy  Warhol's  superstar  (Chelsea 
Girls),  who  also  sang  with  the  Velvet  Un- 
derground. Amazingly,  this  big  blonde  Ger- 
man sexpot,  who  had  spent  most  of  her 
life  on  heroin,  died  falling  off  a  bicycle  on 
Ibiza.  Nico  Painting  is  done  in  the  pale 
corn  color  of  Germanic  hair;  it  is  so  phys- 
ical that  you  want  to  touch  it-kiss  it.  Dur- 
ing one  of  his  separations  from  Helen, 


Marden  commemorated  his  love  for  two 
other  fascinating  singers,  the  raw-voiced  su- 
perstar Janis  Joplin  and  the  poet  and  song- 
writer Patti  Smith.  Both  of  these  "por- 
traits"—titled,  respectively,  For  Pearl  and 
Star— consist  of  three  monochrome  panels 
that  are  tightly  jammed  together,  without 
the  vertical  gap  that  endows  For  Helen 
with  a  more  overtly  human  presence. 

Among  the  other  works  in  which  Mar- 
den memorialized  heroes  and  kindred 
spirits  around  this  time,  pride  of  place 
must  go  to  the  great  horizontal  painting— a 
darkish,  purplish  gray  the  French  would 
call  taupe— in  which  Marden  adulates  Bob 
Dylan.  (This  was  recently  acquired  by  San 
Francisco's  Museum  of  Modern  Art  for 
about  $2  million.)  No  less  powerful  is  a 
pair  of  dark-gray  vertical  "portraits":  the 
self-referential  For  Me,  which  belongs  to 
Rauschenberg,  and  For  Otis,  a  painting 
Marden  was  working  on  when  he  heard 
that  Otis  Redding  had  died.  Another  me- 
mento mori  done  about  the  same  time,  en- 
titled T.K.B.,  after  one  of  Marden's  closest 
friends,  who  had  OD'd,  is  terrifying  in  its 
intensity:  darkness,  maybe  death  made 
tangible.  Like  several  of  Marden's  major 
works  of  the  period,  T.K.B.  has  a  strip 
along  the  bottom  which  is  free  of  the  im- 
pasto  covering  the  rest  of  the  canvas.  This 
device  (borrowed  from  Jasper  Johns)  per- 
mits the  artist,  as  it  were,  to  take  up  one 
edge  of  the  skin  of  paint  and  show  us  the 
Jackson  Pollock-y  splotches  and  dribbles 
underneath.  These  aleatory  marks  hint  at 
the  secrets— memories,  false  starts,  aspira- 
tions, loves,  and  griefs  that  arc  buried. 
like  so  many  bees  in  amber,  under  the  l.i\- 


VANITY     f  A  I  8 


Mj 


allien 


cis  of  oil  paint  and  heated  beeswax  (hence 
the  beautiful  matte  sheen)  and  months 
and  months  of  obsessive  work. 

During  the  summer  of  1971,  Helen  steered 
Maiden  to  the  Aegean  island  of  Hy- 
dra a  much  wilder,  more  hippieish  place 
then  than  it  is  today  and  they  have  spent 
most  summers  there  ever  since.  Their  first 
house  was  so  tiny  Marden  had  to  work 
outdoors  at  a  rickety  table  under  a  grape 
arbor.  Over  the  years,  they  have  increased 
their  Hydriot  holdings:  a  clump  of  white- 
washed cottages  on  the  hill  above  the 
town,  known  as  the  Up  House,  and,  more 
recently,  an  imposing  18th-century  sea  cap- 
tain's residence  just  above  the  port,  known 
as  the  Down  House.  Helen  has  her  studio 
above;  Marden  his  spectacular  studio  be- 
low. For  the  first  20  summers  on  Hydra, 
Marden  did  no  paintings,  only  drawings, 
but  the  light  and  color,  the  sea  and  sky, 
and  the  halcyon  aura  of  the  Aegean  in- 
spired a  number  of  works,  which  he  pro- 
duced back  in  his  New  York  studio— no- 
tably his  celebrated  Grove  Group  series,  in 
which  he  dissolves  Hydra's  genius  loci  in 
layer  after  mysterious  layer  of  pigment. 

These  five  Grove  Group  paintings  ( 1973- 
80)  are  executed  in  a  name-defying  color,  a 
kind  of  celadon,  which  varies  from  silver  to 
pewter  to  lead  and  evokes  the  recto  and  ver- 
so of  the  olive  leaf.  Sea  and  sky  contribute 
to  this  color;  so  possibly  do  the  prevailing 
wind  (the  meltemi)  and  the  prevailing  this- 
tles. These  seemingly  blank,  monochromatic 
paintings  can  be  seen  as  a  kind  of  distilla- 
tion. They  put  me  in  mind  of  a  ritual  which 
took  place  every  autumn  in  the  vineyards  of 
Provence  where  I  used  to  live.  After  the 
grapes  had  been  pressed,  the  residue— grape 
skins,  pips,  leaves,  twigs— would  be  fed  into 
a  steam  engine.  Out  would  come  marc  or 
some  other  spirit,  which  I  liked  to  think  of 
as  a  distillation  not  just  of  the  grapes  but 
also  of  all  the  other  elements— sun,  soil, 
rain— that  go  into  the  making  of  it. 

Hydra,  or  rather  the  boat  trip  to  and 
from  the  island,  inspired  several  of  the 
works  in  the  Sea  Painting  series,  which 
play  the  blues  on  the  port  side  off  the 
ever  so  slightly  different  blues  to  starboard. 
While  exploring  the  mainland,  Marden  had 
become  engrossed  in  the  study  of  ancient 
Greek  architecture.  Little  by  little  he  saw 
how  its  simple,  sacrosanct  proportions 
could  give  his  seemingly  blank  surfaces  a 
semblance  of  structure.  By  adding  a  hori- 
zontal panel  to  the  top  of  a  two-panel  com- 
position, he  could  evoke  the  post-and-lintel 
portal  of  a  temple  and  confer  an  air  of 
monumentality  and  mythic  antiquity  on  his 
basic  rectangles. 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


In  1975  the  Guggenheim  gave  the  56-year- 
old  Marden  a  retrospective,  which  estab- 
lished him  as  a  romantic  visional  y  m  the 
American  tradition  of  the  sublime.  His  slock 
rose  even  higher  when  the  Pace  Gallery 
showed  his  Annunciation  series  ( 1978  80) 
five  large  compositions,  each  consisting  of 
lour  vertical  panels  of  varying  width  and 
color  which  celebrates  the  conception  of 
his  elder  daughter,  Mirabelle.  These  panels, 
in  which  the  sacred  joins  forces  with  the 
profane,  were  inspired  by  a  15th-century  ser- 
mon describing  the  five  successive  stages  of 
the  Virgin  Mary's  reaction  to  the  Annuncia- 
tion: Conturbatio  (disquiet),  Cogitatio  (re- 
flection), Interrogatio  (inquiry),  Humilitalio 
(submission),  and  Meritatio  (merit).  Marden 
has  no  specific  religious  beliefs;  however,  as 
a  child  he  was  an  altar  boy  and  was  "very 
much  involved  in  the  ceremonial  aspect  of 
the  [Episcopal]  church."  Later,  at  college,  he 
discovered  that  "so  much  of  Western  archi- 
tecture and  art  is  based  on  [Catholicism]. 
It's  all  about  what's  supposed  to  happen 
mystically.  I've  always  been  very  intrigued 
by  that."  John  Russell,  the  New  York  Times 
critic,  claimed  that  the  Annunciation  series 
is  "one  of  the  richest,  clearest,  and  most  ful- 
filled of  our  century's  grand  designs.  It  is  a 
misfortune  for  us  all  that  it  was  not  bought 
for  an  American  museum  and  is  now 
widely  dispersed." 

While  working  on  the  Annunciation  se- 
ries, Marden  accepted  a  commission  to  de- 
sign 15  stained-glass  windows  for  the  cathe- 
dral in  Basel.  After  slaving  away  for  seven 
years  (1978-85),  he  shelved  the  project  in 
the  face  of  Swiss  stinginess  and  opposition 
from  reactionary  city  fathers.  However,  the 
experience  was  valuable  in  that  it  obliged 
Marden  to  move  on  from  his  opaque  mono- 
chrome rectangles  and  experiment  for  a 
change  with  planar  transparency  and  the 
juxtaposition  of  symbolic  colors  (reds,  yel- 
lows, blues,  greens,  which  stand  for  fire,  air, 
water,  earth).  Hence  the  series  of  incandes- 
cent Window  studies,  which  allow  for  a 
play  of  light  and  a  breath  of  air  and— a  new 
departure— a  variety  of  shorthand  symbolic 
signs.  Nonfigurative  purists  denounced  this 
foray  into  figuration  as  counterrevolutionary, 
but  Marden  forged  on.  "I  wanted  to  find 
something  . . .  melodious,"  he  said. 

Marden's  preoccupation  with  paint  does 
not  rule  out  a  preoccupation  with  drawing. 
"They  are  not  very  far  apart,  but  they  are 
very  far  apart,"  he  says.  Now  that  he  had 
drifted  away  from  austerity,  it  was  above  all 
drawing  that  enabled  him  to  find  fresh  solu- 
tions to  the  problems  of  minimal  (as  op- 
posed to  Minimalist)  imagery.  He  took  his 
lead  from  Jackson  Pollock.  Besides  a  baster, 
Pollock  had  used  sticks  to  apply  paint  in  a 
sensational  new  way.  Marden  followed  suit, 
and  came  up  with  an  even  more  idiosyn- 
cratic technique.  Instead  of  making  marks 


on  paper  with  a  conventional  pen  or  penfi 

he  uses  sticks  he  has  picked  up  on  tl 
street  sticks  up  to  three  leel  long  from  \Y 
weedlike  ailanthus  trees,  which  have  inva 
ed  New  York's  vacant  lots  and  dips  the 
in  ink  or  paint.  These  sticks  allow  Mardt 
to  work  at  the  same  sort  of  distance  Iroi 
his  sheet  of  paper  thai  an  observer  woul 
adopt.  He  says  that  they  oblige  him  to  leal 
to  draw  all  over  again.  It  has  been  wt 
worth  it.  Marden  has  been  able  to  adaj 
drawing  to  his  own  special  needs  and  intn 
duce  a  romantic  hint  of  ghostly  figuratic 
into  his  hitherto  totally  abstract  work.  F( 
all  their  seeming  spontaneity,  these  drawing 
have  often  been  worked  on  for  two  or  thre 
years— like  the  paintings-which  explains  tr 
smallness  of  Marden's  output.  Even  after  r 
has  handed  over  a  painting  to  his  dealer,  \ 
has  been  known  to  insist  on  its  return  an 
spend  months  reworking  it. 


In  the  early  1980s,  Marden  suffered  wh 
he  called  a  midlife  crisis.  It  was  as  if  h 
had  turned  the  clock  back  to  the  wild  da) 
of  Max's  Kansas  City.  He  took  a  lot  c 
drugs.  He  broke  up  with  Helen,  who  ha 
recently  given  birth  to  a  second  daughte 
and  embarked  on  an  affair  with  Heaths 
Watts,  the  vivid  star  of  George  Balanchine 
New  York  City  Ballet.  And  although  h 
work  was  attracting  enormous  attentio 
and  enormous  prices,  he  took  a  dislike  t 
his  gallery:  "I  would  work  on  a  singl 
painting  for  a  year  [his  18-panel  Thira],  ju< 
as  a  fuck-you  to  my  gallery. ...  It  got  boi 
ing."  And  then  he  lost  his  appetite  fc 
Sturm  und  Drang  and  went  back  to  Hele 
and  the  kids  and  the  house  in  Greenwic 
Village  and  the  summers  on  Hydra.  H 
also  switched  dealers,  ultimately  joinin 
the  more  sympathetic  and  understandin 
Matthew  Marks  in  New  York  and  Thoma 
Ammann  in  Zurich.  Marks  asks  anythin 
from  $500,000  to  $1  million  for  one  c 
Marden's  current  paintings.  The  recor 
price  for  an  earlier  work  is  $2.7  million. 

To  put  their  lives  back  together  again 
the  Mardens  took  their  children  on  a  yeai 
long  trip  around  the  world.  This  coincidei 
with  Marden's  newfound  passion  for  Ch 
nese  calligraphy,  an  abstract  blend  of  irr 
agery  and  script  that  has  had  a  decisiv 
influence  on  the  figuration  in  his  recen 
work.  The  trip  reinforced  Marden's  taste  fo 
Asian  art;  it  also  had  a  very  therapeutic 
effect  on  his  and  Helen's  spirits.  Mardei 
was  particularly  excited  by  a  visit  to  a  "shel 
museum"— more  of  a  shell  bazaar— in  Kra 
bi,  on  the  southwestern  coast  of  Thailand 
where  he  was  able  to  study  the  speckles 
surfaces  and  structures  of  the  shells.  Th 
markings  have  engendered  some  of  hi 
finest  drawings.  So  that  he  can  continiu 
working  on  these  drawings,  Marden  take 
them  with  him  from  New  York  to  Greece 


j  also  to  Pennsylvania,  where  he  has  a 
0-acre  estate.  Rainbow  Farms,  near  a 
tee  called  Fagles  Mere. 
Marden's  preoccupation  with  Chinese 
ligraphy  inspired  what  are  arguably  his 
;atest.  certainly  his  most  ecstatic  paint- 
is:  the  Cold  Mountain  series  (1988-91). 
ese  commemorate  the  so-called  Cold 
wntain  poet,  a  seventh-century  Chinese 
rmit  named  after  the  holy  mountain 
lere  he  had  his  hermitage.  In  these  six 
ge  paintings  (not  to  speak  of  numerous 
ated  drawings  and  a  suite  of  etchings), 
irdcn  animates  the  calligraphic  charac- 
s  in  the  poet's  formulaic  couplets  and 
nsforms  them  into  a  layered  tangle  of 
ncing,  proliferating  strands.  In  their  intri- 
cy  and  density,  the  Cold  Mountain  paint- 
's recall  Jackson  Pollock,  one  of  whose 
ied-up  pots  of  silver  paint  Marden  keeps 


as  a  sacred  relic  in  his  New  York  studio;  for 
better  or  worse,  however.  Marden's  work  is 
less  tortured,  more  lyrical  than  Pollock's. 

In  1995,  Marden  harnessed  his  work  to 
yet  another  Asian  art  form.  On  a  trip  to 
China  he  visited  the  Garden  for  Lingering 
in  Suzhou,  with  its  celebrated  centerpiece, 
the  Cloud-Capped  Peak,  a  natural  rock  for- 
mation like  a  column  of  petrified  smoke. 
The  "flow  of  energy"  from  the  Cloud- 
Capped  Peak  has  fueled  much  of  Marden's 
recent  work.  He  was  also  very  taken  with 
the  cave  paintings  at  Dunhuang— especially 
those  depicting  the  "Ribbon  Dance,"  which 
inspired  the  joyous  Chinese  Daneing  in  the 
Dallas  show.  That  kind  of  movement,  Mar- 
den says,  is  figural.  "You're  painting  it  with 
a  long  brush,  so  you're  moving.  In  a  sense  it 
becomes  a  transference  of  your  own  dance 
to  the  canvas."  Marden's  concept  of  dance 


was  reinforced  by  reading  Robert  Graves's 
Greek  Myths:  "I  like  it  when  [Graves]  talks 
about  the  Muses  as  maenads,  these  Baccha- 
nalian women  wildly  dancing  in  the  moun- 
tains. That's  what  I  was  working  with  in 
The  Muses.  Just  a  group  of  figures  dancing, 
the  Peloponnesian  landscape,  Dionysian 
madness."  Look  hard  into  this  painting  and 
you  will  be  able  to  distinguish  in  the  tangle 
of  lines  the  nine  Muses,  who  stand  for  mu- 
sic, poetry,  history,  science,  and  the  arts. 
(Too  bad  there  are  no  Muses  of  painting  or 
sculpture.)  This  work  also  envisions  some- 
thing more  personal:  the  artist's  beautiful, 
maenadic  daughters  cavorting  on  the 
slopes  of  Hydra  much  as  the  Muses  sup- 
posedly did  on  Mount  Olympus.  As  for  the 
"Dionysian  madness,"  I  suspect  this  is  what 
Marden  kept  hidden  away  underneath  all 
those  volcanic  deposits  of  paint.  □ 


ussie  tiace 


Ra 


ImNUED  i  rom  page  i65  say  anything 
ore  than  what  you  could  expect  in  any 
Dbart,"  recalls  Rod  Hunter,  navigator  on 
e  Adelaide  yacht  VC  Offshore  Stand  Aside. 
t  was  for  the  40s  and  50s,  a  southerly 
ister.  We  sail  in  40s  and  50s  all  the  time. 
s  normal.  It's  just  a  fact  of  life."  Recalls 
lison,  "There  was  a  sense  of  'Storm? 
ece  of  cake!'  Of  course,  no  one  said  any- 
ing  about  a  hurricane." 
Back  in  the  pack,  the  nine  veteran  Tas- 
anian  sailors  aboard  Business  Post  Naiad 
eeted  news  of  the  storm  warning  with 
arty  laughter.  Almost  all  had  been  sailing 
iss  Strait  since  they  were  boys,  and  they 
:re  accustomed  to  fighting  the  strait's 
:ep,  choppy  waves  and  50-  and  60-knot 
nds.  The  skipper,  Bruce  Guy,  speculated 
at  the  coming  blow  might  actually  give 
sm  an  advantage  the  next  day.  "The  guys 
>m  behind,  who  haven't  been  in  Bass 
rait  before,  they're  going  to  get  a  bit  of  a 
istup,"  observed  Rob  Matthews,  the  hous- 
l  inspector. 

~^he  powerful  wind  at  their  backs,  Ellison 
.  would  later  say,  should  have  been  a 
irning.  It  was  "explosive,  gusty,"  he  notes, 
d  it  quickly  began  to  take  a  toll  on  Sayo- 
ra.  By  late  afternoon,  as  Sayonara  and 
indahella  left  the  rest  of  the  fleet  miles  be- 
id,  the  gusts  had  blown  out  three  differ- 
t  spinnaker  sails  aboard  Ellison's  boat 
d  had  snapped  the  brass  fitting  of  one  of 
:  spinnaker  poles,  damage  Ellison  had 
ver  seen  before.  But  the  boat  was  simply 
ing  too  fast  for  this  to  worry  anyone.  That 
ernoon  Sayonara  hit  a  boat  record.  26.1 
ots,  and  was  already  on  pace  to  break 
mmg  Glory's  1996  record  time. 


As  darkness  fell  around  nine,  the  wind 
swung  around,  as  predicted,  and  began 
blowing  hard  out  of  the  south.  Raindrops 
pelted  Sayonara  as  the  boat  crossed  the 
incoming  front,  and  the  crew  of  23 
slipped  into  their  bright-red  heavy-weather 
gear.  By  11.  Sayonara  was  plowing  into  a 
40-knot  head  wind.  Waves  grew  to  15, 
then  20  feet,  and  almost  everyone  on 
board  began  to  experience  seasickness. 
"Anyone  that  said  he  didn't  get  sick  out 
there  is  lying,"  recalls  Ellison.  "We  had 
guys  who've  sailed  the  Whitbread  [round- 
the-world  race]  puking  their  guts  out,  like 
five  times  in  the  first  12  hours.  We  were 
on  the  Jenny  Craig  plan— a  great  weight- 
loss  experience." 

By  the  time  Sayonara  entered  Bass 
Strait  after  midnight,  Ellison  was  having 
difficulty  driving  the  boat.  Heavy,  dark 
clouds  hung  down,  obscuring  the  horizon, 
and  the  flying  spume  and  rain  stung  his 
face.  A  small  rip  developed  in  the  main- 
sail, and  when  crewmen  went  to  fix  it  they 
found  the  giant  sail  was  tearing  out  the 
metal  track  that  fastened  it  to  the  mast. 
Around  three  Ellison  realized  he  couldn't 
take  it  anymore. 

"You  take  over,"  he  yelled  to  Brad  But- 
terworth,  a  veteran  New  Zealand  sailor 
standing  to  his  side  in  the  cockpit.  "Get 
me  outta  here!" 

Ellison  went  belowdecks  to  check  the 
weather  forecasts  with  his  navigator,  Mark 
Rudiger.  Just  as  he  walked  up  to  the  nav 
station,  Ellison  saw  a  new  satellite  photo 
downloading  onto  one  of  Rudiger's  lap- 
tops. Stunned,  both  men  looked  for  several 
seconds  at  the  ominous  doughnut  of  white 
clouds  forming  above  Bass  Strait. 

"Mark,"  Ellison  finally  said,  "have  you 
ever  seen  anything  like  that  before?" 

Rudiger  slowly  shook  his  head.  "Well,  I 


have,"  Ellison  said.  "It  was  on  the  Weather 
Channel.  And  it  was  called  a  hurricane. 
What  the  fuck  is  that  thing  doing  out  here?" 

Will  Oxley,  a  strapping  33-year-old  ma- 
rine biologist,  crouched  on  the  deck 
of  B-52  and  watched  the  front  move  in. 
Lightning  zigzagged  across  the  horizon  to 
the  south,  and  as  the  first  raindrops  wet 
his  face,  Oxley  felt  satisfied.  He  glanced  at 
his  watch.  It  was  12:15.  As  the  boat's  navi- 
gator, Oxley  had  worked  with  "Clouds" 
Badham  to  predict  that  the  front  would  hit 
them  at  midnight. 

For  B-52,  like  many  of  the  114  boats 
trailing  Sayonara.  the  night  passed  unevent- 
fully. At  8:30  the  next  morning,  as  winds 
continued  gusting  up  toward  50  miles  an 
hour,  Oxley  stepped  down  the  companion- 
way  to  check  the  latest  weather  reports.  He 
faxed  the  weather  bureau  in  Melbourne  for 
a  coastal  update  and  was  surprised  to  see 
that  winds  off  Wilson's  Promontory,  the 
southernmost  point  in  Australia,  had  regis- 
tered 71  knots— over  80  m.p.h.— two  hours 
earlier.  While  the  peninsula  was  well  west 
of  the  racecourse,  it  served  as  an  early  indi- 
cator of  the  winds  Oxley  expected  to  blow 
through  the  strait.  He  guessed  they  might 
hit  a  60-knot  blow,  which  worried  him.  He 
listened  to  an  oil-rig  weather  forecast  and 
heard  the  same.  Oxley  caucused  with  skip- 
per Wayne  Millar,  and  the  two  men  agreed 
that  by  later  that  day  they  would  be  in  "sur- 
vival mode"  for  several  hours  but  should  be 
able  to  begin  racing  again  by  the  evening. 
"Looks  like  it's  going  to  be  a  bit  bouncy, 
mates,"  Oxley  told  the  crew. 

All  that  morning  as  the  fleet  moved 
briskly  south,  the  winds  picked  up  to  30, 
40,  then  50  knots.  By  noon  some  boats 
were  already  retiring  from  the  race.  At 
10:30  the  race's  first  major  casualty  oc- 


\Y     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Aussie  Race 


curred  when  the  m.isi  broke  aboard  Ham 
Jaguar,  a  sleek  65-footer  owned  bj  the  prom- 
inent Sydney  attorney  Martin  James,  forc- 
ing the  boat  to  wait  nearly  IS  hours  lor  res- 
cue by  a  fishing  trawler. 

2:30  I'M. 

Simon  Clark  sat  on  the  starboard  bow  of 
Stand  Aside  and  dangled  his  legs  into 
the  booming  waves.  Clark,  a  28 -year-old 
who  had  sailed  since  he  was  a  boy,  and 
three  friends  had  joined  up  with  Adelaide 
businessman  James  Hallion's  eight-man 
crew,  and  Clark  thought  Hallion  had  driven 
a  bit  conservatively  early  in  the  race.  Never- 
theless, they  had  busted  down  the  coast  at 
an  average  speed  of  15  knots,  even  hitting 
18  and  19  at  times. 

Around  noon,  as  winds  continued  to 
pick  up,  they  had  taken  down  the  mainsail 
and  put  up  a  storm  jib,  expecting  heavy 
weather.  Clark  wasn't  too  worried,  nor  was 
anyone  on  board.  By  two,  winds  were  hit- 
ting just  35  or  40  knots,  while  Clark  had 
seen  only  one  "green  wave"— that  was  what 
he  called  it— a  rogue  wall  of  water  that 
looked  as  if  it  had  risen  straight  from  the 
mossy  bottom  of  Bass  Strait. 

Suddenly  he  saw  another.  As  the  wave 
rose  up  before  him,  Clark  thought  it  looked 
like  a  tennis  court  standing  on  end. 

"Bear  away!"  he  shouted. 

Hallion  was  unable  to  steer  down  the 
wave.  The  boat  rode  high  on  the  wave  and 
slithered  to  the  left.  Just  then  the  wave  crest- 
ed and  crashed  onto  the  deck,  rolling  the 
boat  hard  to  port.  As  Stand  Aside  fell  down 
the  face  of  the  wave,  its  roll  continued.  For  a 
fleeting  second  it  felt  as  if  they  were  air- 
borne. Then  they  landed,  upside  down. 

Slammed  facedown  into  the  roiling 
ocean,  Clark  felt  a  terrific  pain  in  his  left 
knee:  his  anterior  cruciate  ligament  had 
snapped  like  a  rubber  band.  Underwater, 
he  unhooked  his  safety  harness  and  floated 
to  the  surface  just  as  the  boat  righted  itself. 
Pulling  himself  back  on  board,  Clark  was 
stunned  to  see  a  seven-foot  gash  in  the  cab- 
in; the  mast  lay  draped  over  the  side,  bro- 
ken. His  crewmates  were  no  better  off.  His 
friend  Mike  Marshman  had  somehow  lost 
a  chunk  of  his  finger.  Another  man  had 
broken  ribs,  still  another  a  nasty  cut  across 
his  forehead.  Within  minutes  Stand  Aside 
began  sending  out  the  first  of  what  would 
be  many  Maydays  that  afternoon. 

3:00  p.m. 

As  the  storm  system  intensified,  the  first 
to  encounter  the  full  force  of  its  lash- 
ing winds  was  a  group  of  a  half-dozen 
yachts  led  by  Sword  of  Orion,  which  was 
running  seventh  overall  as  the  afternoon  be- 


gan,  Like  s<>  many  others,  Rob  Kothe,  the 

boat's  52-year-old  skipper,  had  shrugged  oil 
the  storm  warnings,  but  as  he  staggered 
down  the  COmpanionway  to  call  in  Sword's 
position  at  the  2:05  radio  check,  he  real- 
l/ed  conditions  were  growing  far  worse 
than  anything  they  had  been  warned  of 
Now  about  100  miles  south  of  the  sleepy 
port  of  Eden,  Kolhe's  boat  began  to  experi- 
ence winds  above  90  miles  an  hour.  The 
sharp,  spiking  green  waves  towered  40  and 
50  feet  over  the  boat,  crashing  into  the 
cockpit,  churning  his  crew's  bodies  like 
laundry  and  stretching  their  safety  lines  to 
the  breaking  point. 

In  a  race,  weather  data  is  a  jealously 
guarded  secret,  something  boats  rarely  share. 
As  Kothe  sat  at  his  radio  console  below- 
decks  wiping  seawater  from  his  face,  he 
tuned  his  HF  dial  to  the  race  frequency 
and  listened  as  boat  after  boat,  going  in  al- 
phabetical order,  radioed  in  its  position 
and  nothing  more.  When  it  came  to  the 
5"s,  Kothe  listened  to  Sayonara's  position 
report,  then  made  a  decision  that  probably 
saved  many  lives:  he  gave  a  weather  report. 
"The  forecast  is  for  40  to  55  knots  [of 
wind],"  Kothe  announced  to  the  fleet.  "We 
are  experiencing  between  65  and  82.  The 
weather  is  much  stronger  than  forecast." 

Kothe  listened  as  the  radio  operator 
aboard  Young  Endeavour,  obviously  struck 
by  news  of  winds  approaching  100  miles  an 
hour,  repeated  the  warning  to  the  fleet. 
Back  in  the  pack,  about  two  dozen  boats, 
including  the  Queensland  yacht  Midnight 
Speeial,  decided  to  quit  the  race  and  head 
for  the  port  of  Eden. 

3:15  p.m. 

Tucked  away  on  an  inland  plateau  two 
hours  from  the  sea,  the  drowsy  Aus- 
tralian city  of  Canberra  is  one  of  those  kit- 
designed  capitals  where  office  workers  and 
diplomats  brown-bag  their  lunches  around 
concrete  fountains  and  sterile,  man-made 
lakes.  Downtown,  the  airy,  third-floor  war 
room  of  the  Australian  Maritime  Safety  Au- 
thority, lined  with  purring  Compaq  desktops 
and  sprawling  maps  of  the  continent,  could 
pass  for  the  office  of  almost  any  government 
bureaucracy,  a  geological  survey  maybe,  or  a 
census  bureau.  But  the  tiny  red  target  sym- 
bols that  began  popping  up  on  Rupert  Lam- 
ming's  screen  that  afternoon  weren't  miner- 
als or  voters.  They  were  distress  calls. 

When  Lamming,  a  sober  41-year-old 
with  15  years  in  the  merchant  marine  be- 
hind him,  arrived  for  his  shift  at  three, 
there  was  just  a  single  target  in  Bass  Strait, 
and  it  appeared  to  be  a  false  alarm.  A 
Thai-registered  freighter,  Thor  Sky,  had  ra- 
dioed in  that  it  had  accidentally  activated 
its  forearm-size  emergency  beacon,  known 
as  an  Emergency  Position  Indicating  Radio 
Beacon  (epirb).  Every  hour,  one  of  seven 


satellites  in  polar  orbit  three  Russian.  foi 
American  tracks  across  Bass  Strait;  tr 
l  -.Pilot's  signal  bounces  oil  these  satellite 
then  ricochets  down  through  ground  si, 
tioiis  in  Queensland,  Western  Australia,  an 
New  Zealand  to  the  computers  on  Lan 
ming's  pristine  white  countertop. 

Trouble  was,  Thor  Sky's  beacon  broat 
cast  at  406  megahertz;  clicking  his  mou 
on  the  red  target  on  his  computer  screei 
Lamming  saw  that  the  beacon  emanate 
from  an  older,  smaller  model,  broadcaslin 
at  121.5  megahertz.  Aware  that  the  Hoba 
fleet  was  sailing  into  treacherous  weathe 
Lamming  decided  to  take  no  chances.  H 
had  a  colleague  dial  a  charter  air  service  i 
Mallacoota,  a  tiny  beach  town  near  tr 
continent's  southeastern  tip.  A  half-hour  la 
er  the  plane  radioed  back:  it  had  a  Maydi 
from  a  yacht  named  Stand  Aside. 


3:35  p.i\ 

After  finishing  his  impromptu  weather  r 
port,  Rob  Kothe  emerged  onto  the  dec 
of  Sword  of  Orion  to  find  that  the  winds  ha 
suddenly  fallen  to  50  knots— "a  walk  in  th 
park,"  as  he  later  put  it.  Had  the  ston 
passed?  Or  were  they  merely  in  its  eye?  A 
3:35— he  looked  at  his  watch— Kothe  got  h 
answer.  As  if  a  door  had  swung  open,  th 
winds  slammed  back  hard,  spiking  up  abov 
80  miles  an  hour.  Kothe  gave  orders  fc 
everyone  but  two  crewmen,  a  young  bov 
man  named  Darren  Senogles  and  the  3: 
year-old  Olympic  yacht  racer  Glyn  Charle: 
to  remain  below.  Kothe  ran  down  the  con 
panionway,  then  radioed  the  Young  Endea 
our  that  Sword  of  Orion  was  quitting  the  rac 
and  heading  back  north,  toward  Eden. 

Sword's  decision  to  turn  north,  howeve 
sent  it  back  into  the  strongest  wind 
wrapped  around  the  eye  of  the  storn 
"The  storm,"  Kothe  later  observed,  "didn 
give  a  rat's  ass  whether  we  were  still  racin 
or  heading  to  port."  After  15  minutes,  a 
Kothe  hunched  over  the  radio,  he  felt  th 
boat  rising  up  an  especially  steep  wave 
Suddenly  Sword  rolled  upside  down  an 
they  were  airborne,  falling  down  the  fac 
of  the  wave  for  a  full  two  seconds,  unt 
Kothe  felt  his  boat  hit  the  ocean  with 
sickening  crack.  Seconds  later  the  bos 
rolled  back  over,  righting  itself,  and  h 
found  himself  facedown  on  the  floor  o 
the  cabin,  bound  up  with  ropes  and  shai 
tered  equipment  as  if  he  were  a  broke: 
marionette.  As  Kothe  struggled  to  regai: 
his  footing,  he  heard  Darren  Senogles' 
waterlogged  screams  from  above  deck 
"Man  overboard!  Man  overboard!  Mai 
overboard!" 

It  was  Glyn  Charles.  When  the  wav 
hit,  Charles  had  been  at  the  helm,  attempt 
ing  to  muscle  the  seven-foot-wide  whee 
through  oncoming  waves.  The  force  of  th 
wave  apparently  swung  the  boom  aroun< 


VANITY     FAIR 


e  a  baseball  bat  into  a  fastball;  it  struck 
larlcs  in  the  midsection,  driving  him 
ainst  the  spokes  of  the  wheel  and  snap- 
ng  his  safety  harness.  As  everyone  else 
rambled  up  onto  the  broken  deck, 
larlcs  could  be  seen  in  the  water,  about 

I  yards  away. 

"Swim!  Swim!"  people  began  shouting 

Senogles  frantically  wrapped  himself  in 
long  rope  and  prepared  to  dive  in  after 
i  friend.  Charles,  obviously  stunned,  raised 

single  arm,  as  if  the  other  was  injured. 
>meone  threw  a  life  ring  toward  him,  but 
narles  was  upwind,  and  the  ring  sailed 
:lplessly  back  onto  the  deck. 

Just  then  another  huge  wave  broke  and 
)iled  onto  the  deck,  knocking  people  and 
luipment  about.  By  the  time  Kothe  re- 
lined  his  feet,  Charles  was  150  yards  off. 
ie  roll  had  actually  torn  the  deck  loose 
jm  the  cabin  below,  and  the  men  on 
:ck,  crouching  unsteadily,  were  powerless 

retrieve  the  struggling  Brit.  In  the  roiling 
as  Charles  could  be  seen  only  when  he 
ested  a  wave.  Everyone  watched  in  agony 
r  a  seemingly  endless  five  minutes  as  he 
)ated  farther  and  farther  from  the  boat, 
nd  then  he  was  gone. 

Kothe  had  already  raced  to  the  radio 
id  began  sending  out  an  urgent  Mayday. 
ut  the  boat's  mainmast  lay  broken  in  five 
aces  and  had  lost  its  aerial.  Kothe  broad- 
ist  Maydays  for  a  solid  two  hours,  but  no 
le  in  a  position  to  help  Glyn  Charles 
:ard  a  word  Kothe  said. 

4:00  p.m. 

rhe  storm  system's  hurricane-force  winds 
and  steep  black  waves  had  begun  to  en- 
llf  the  rest  of  the  fleet.  Aboard  Solo  Globe 
hallenger,  Tony  Mowbray  thought  he  was 
mdling  the  mountainous  seas  well.  In  32 
:ars  of  sailing,  he  had  never  seen  such 
>nditions.  The  waves  weren't  normal  waves. 
e  thought  of  them  as  cliffs— cliffs  of 
ater— that  rose  to  impossible  heights  and 
iddenly  fell  onto  his  boat,  one  after  anoth- 
;  with  a  stultifyingly  rhythmic  Bang!  . . . 
ANG!  . . .  Bang!  When  a  large  wave 
nded  atop  you,  all  you  could  do  was  hold 
i  to  something  and  twist  your  body  away 
;  the  boat  shuddered  with  the  impact;  if  it 
ruck  you  square  in  the  ribs,  it  felt  like 
Mike  Tyson  body  shot.  Mowbray  had 
ailed  down  all  his  sails  a  bit  early,  at 
son,  just  to  be  safe.  He  had  heard  Sword 
r Orion's  weather  warning,  but  thought  he 
)uld  still  make  it  across  the  strait. 
But  Solo  couldn't  survive  the  marine 
luivalent  of  a  one-two  punch.  Mowbray 
as  below  when  the  first  wave  socked  it  in 
le  bow,  swinging  it  around  for  the  enor- 
ious  65-foot  wave  that  suddenly  reared  up 
:hind  the  boat  and  fell  on  top  of  it.  The 
earning  white  yacht  lurched  to  port  and 

II  sideways.  Then  it  rolled  to  145  degrees 


and  seemed  to  dig  in  as  the  mighty  wave 
shoved  it  through  the  ocean,  not  quite  face- 
down in  the  water,  for  what  Mowbray  later 
estimated  was  a  full  20  seconds.  The  force 
of  the  "shove"  shattered  the  interior  cabin's 
seven-foot  skylight.  Seawater  poured  in. 

When  the  boat  finally  righted  itself,  Mow- 
bray charged  up  on  deck  to  see  what  fate 
had  befallen  the  four  crewmen  there.  Glen 
Picasso,  a  40-year-old  coal  miner,  was  in 
the  water  clinging  to  the  stern;  he  had  been 
pulled  behind  the  boat  by  his  safety  line 
and  had  sustained  broken  ribs.  Tony  Purkiss 
lay  on  the  floor  of  the  cockpit,  his  head 
drenched  in  blood  from  a  deep  cut.  But  it 
was  45-year-old  Keir  Enderby  who  was  in 
the  worst  shape.  The  mast  and  rigging,  bro- 
ken into  pieces  by  the  force  of  the  wave, 
had  fallen  across  his  legs.  He  was  scream- 
ing, "Get  it  off  me!"  Hurriedly  Mowbray 
and  others  shoved  the  mast  into  the  sea, 
then  took  Enderby  below  and  tucked  him 
into  a  bunk.  Picasso  soon  followed,  over- 
come by  shock.  The  emergency  beacon  was 
activated. 

Those  uninjured  bailed  out  the  cabin, 
stuffed  sleeping  bags  into  the  gaping  hole 
where  the  skylight  had  been,  and  prayed. 
Mowbray  spent  the  next  few  hours  staring  at 
the  waves  and  hoping  his  crippled  boat 
wouldn't  founder.  "I'll  never  look  at  waves 
the  same  again,"  he  says.  "Those  waves  were 
out  to  kill  you.  That  was  our  attitude.  You 
could  see  death  working  in  that  water." 

5:00  p.m. 

As  her  medevac  helicopter  struggled  to 
maintain  its  position  in  the  shrieking 
winds  50  feet  above  Stand  Aside,  Kristy 
McAlister  leaned  far  out  its  right-hand  door 
and  gulped.  McAlister,  a  trim,  girlish  30- 
year-old  paramedic  with  Canberra's  South- 
Care  helicopter-ambulance  service,  had  been 
working  on  choppers  for  only  two  months, 
and  this  was  her  first  ocean  rescue.  Below 
was  a  scene  unlike  any  she  had  dreamed  of: 
evil  black  waves,  as  blocky  and  stout  as 
apartment  buildings,  crashing  this  way  and 
that.  The  helicopter's  altimeter  swung  wildly, 
registering  60  feet  one  moment,  10  feet  the 
next,  as  a  dark  wave  swept  up  beneath  its 
underbelly.  The  winds  hit  McAlister's  face 
with  a  force  she  knew  only  from  sticking  her 
head  out  the  window  of  a  car  speeding 
down  the  highway  at  80  miles  an  hour.  One 
thought  crossed  her  mind:  Oh,  God  . . . 

Another  helicopter  had  already  winched 
eight  sailors  out  of  a  life  raft  beside  the  boat 
and  then,  running  low  on  fuel,  had  wheeled 
about  and  headed  back  toward  land.  Below, 
a  man  was  in  the  water,  floating  briskly 
away  from  the  raft.  McAlister,  wearing  a 
black  wet  suit,  a  navy-blue  life  vest,  and  a 
lightweight  helmet,  had  no  time  to  waste. 
Grabbing  an  oval  rescue  strop,  she  held  her 
breath— and  jumped. 


The  water  felt  like  concrete  as  she  hit  it, 
and  a  wave  immediately  drove  her  under, 
down,  down,  forcing  seawater  into  her 
mouth  and  down  her  throat.  She  fought  her 
way  to  the  surface,  coughing  and  hacking, 
and  found  herself  barely  10  feet  from  the 
man  loose  in  the  ocean. 

"I'm  going  to  put  this  over  your  head 
and  under  your  armpits!"  she  shouted,  in- 
dicating the  strop.  "You  must  keep  your 
arms  down  or  you  will  fall  out!" 

The  man  nodded  just  as  a  wave  drove 
both  of  them  underwater  for  several  sec- 
onds. When  they  returned  to  the  surface, 
the  helicopter  winched  them  both  skyward. 

Within  minutes  McAlister  had  returned 
to  the  roiling  ocean,  this  time  landing  be- 
side the  life  raft,  where  two  shivering  sailors 
awaited  rescue.  When  the  last  man  was 
safely  aboard,  McAlister  rolled  to  one  side 
and  began  vomiting  seawater.  Ten  minutes 
later  she  was  still  retching. 

5:15  p.m. 

As  the  winds  swirled  and  howled  around 
them,  the  nine  Tasmanian  sailors  aboard 
Business  Post  Naiad  remained  in  high  spirits. 
Roughly  10  miles  east  of  Sword  of  Orion, 
they  had  listened  to  Rob  Kothe's  weather  re- 
port, but  had  decided  to  press  on.  Rob 
Matthews,  like  almost  everyone  else  on 
board,  had  survived  winds  of  more  than  70 
knots  in  Bass  Strait,  and  had  been  forced 
down  to  "bare  poles,"  with  all  sails  lowered. 
A  few  minutes  past  five,  Matthews  was  be- 
hind the  wheel,  attempting  to  drive  the 
boat's  bow  through  the  incoming  waves, 
when  he  heard  Tony  Guy,  Bruce 's  nephew, 
pipe  up  behind  him.  "I've  lit  a  fag,  Robbie," 
said  Guy,  proudly  displaying  a  cigarette. 

"Tony  reckons  he's  going  to  have  a 
smoke  in  70-knot  winds,"  Matthews  yelled 
to  Steve  Walker,  the  boat's  helmsman.  Wal- 
ker grinned. 

Moments  later,  as  Matthews  attempted  to 
maneuver  the  boat  up  the  face  of  a  50-foot 
wave,  the  boat  slid  sideways  just  as  the  wave 
crested.  To  the  dismay  of  Matthews  and  the 
four  other  sailors  on  deck,  Business  Post 
Naiad  rolled  to  its  left  and  plummeted 
down  the  wave's  face,  then  rolled  still  fur- 
ther as  it  fell.  It  landed  upside  down  in  the 
trough  of  the  wave  with  a  thunderous  crack. 
All  five  men  were  plunged  facedown  into 
the  raging  sea.  Then,  almost  before  anyone 
had  a  chance  to  realize  what  had  happened, 
the  boat  righted  itself.  The  five  men.  thrown 
over  the  starboard  side  to  the  end  of  their 
safety  lines,  popped  to  the  surface  to  find 
the  deck  suddenly  awash. 

"Fuck,  the  mast  is  over  the  side!"  some- 
one yelled. 

It  was  true.  The  mast  had  broken  in  half 
and  was  lying  across  the  starboard  side,  its 
top  buried  in  the  waves.  "That  wasn't  in 
the  bloody  brochure."  Phil  Skeggs  said,  try- 


A Y     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Aussie  Race 


mg  to  make  a  joke.  But  as  the  full  crew  ol 
nine  men  struggled  to  pull  the  broken  mast 
back  oil  deck,  their  mood  turned  somber. 
For  Business  Post  Naiad,  the  race  was  over. 
Grudgingly  the  crew  agreed  to  rev  up  the 
motor  and  set  a  course  toward  Eden. 

5:30  km. 
6TI  Tayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!  Here  is 
1V1  Wins/on  Churchill,  Winston  Churchill 
We  are  taking  water  rapidly!  We  can't  get 
the  motor  started  to  start  the  pumps!  We 
are  getting  the  life  rafts  on  deck!" 

His  mast  and  long-range  aerials  still  in- 
tact, Richard  Winning  broadcast  a  furious 
Mayday  even  as  seawater  lapped  onto  the 
deck  and  the  rest  of  the  crew  dropped  the 
boat's  life  rafts  over  the  side.  Winning  had 
been  at  the  helm  a  half-hour  before  when  a 
sneering  green  wave  had  slapped  the  old 
wooden  yacht,  knocking  it  flat  on  its  side. 
Below,  John  Stanley,  a  taciturn  51-year-old 
Sydney  marina  manager,  had  been  thrown 
into  a  wall  as  the  three  starboard  windows 
imploded  and  foamy  saltwater  sprayed 
across  the  cabin.  When  the  boat  righted  it- 
self, Stanley  noted  with  horror  that  a  full 
six  feet  of  Churchill's  inner  bulwarks  was 
gone.  "Must've  sprung  a  plank!,"  Stanley 
yelled  to  Winning. 

They  were  going  down  fast.  As  seawater 
began  sloshing  across  the  deck,  Winning 
and  his  eight  crewmates,  ranging  from  a 
Sydney  merchant  banker  to  a  friend's  19- 
year-old  son,  scrambled  into  the  life  rafts- 
Winning,  the  boy,  and  two  others  in  one, 
Stanley  and  four  friends  in  the  other.  The 
inflatable  black  rubber  rafts  were  both 
topped  with  bright-orange  canopies,  which 
could  be  tied  shut,  though  seawater  still 
poured  in,  forcing  the  men  to  bail  constant- 
ly. As  Churchill  sank,  Winning  managed  to 
tie  the  two  life  rafts  together,  but  the  waves 
tore  them  apart  barely  10  minutes  later. 
The  two  boats,  climbing,  then  falling  down 
the  faces  of  50-foot  waves,  lost  sight  of 
each  other  soon  after.  Winning  could  only 
hope  his  Mayday  would  be  answered. 

6:15  p.m. 

On  the  deck  of  B-52,  Mark  Vickers,  a 
32-year-old  ceramic-tile  layer,  was  stand- 
ing at  the  giant,  seven-foot  wheel  when  he 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  mammoth  wave  rising 
up  behind  the  boat.  A  wall  of  bluish-green 
water  that  towered  over  the  boat's  mast— 
Vickers  later  estimated  its  height  at  60  feet 
or  more— the  wave  began  to  crest  and  fall 
forward  just  as  he  called  out  to  his  friend 
Russell  Kingston,  who  was  crouched  forward. 

"Oh,  shit,  Russell!,"  Vickers  called  out. 
"This  one's  gonna  hurt!" 

With  that  the  massive  wave  came  crash- 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


ing  down  directly  onto  the  boat,  li-52  half 
rolled,  half  pitchpoled  an  end-over-end 
flip  and  landed  upside  down.  The  wave 
had  hit  with  such  force  that  Vickers  was 
driven  through  the  wheel's  spokes,  breaking 
them  and  badly  denting  the  wheel.  For  sev- 
eral seconds  he  fell  as  if  he  were  inside  a 
blender  as  the  sea  furiously  tossed  him 
about.  Coming  to  his  senses,  he  opened  his 
eyes  and  at  fust  saw  only  blackness.  Disori- 
ented, he  glanced  upward  and  saw  light 
Hashing  through  portals  in  the  ship's  hull. 
Only  then  did  he  realize  the  boat  was  up- 
side down  and  he  was  beneath  it. 

He  couldn't  swim  free.  The  rope  to  his 
safety  harness  was  wrapped  twice  around 
the  wheel.  He  unhooked  the  harness  but 
still  couldn't  find  a  way  clear  of  the  lines 
and  equipment  swirling  around  him.  Even- 
tually, with  his  breath  running  out,  he 
kicked  down  and  swam  out,  coming  to  the 
surface  about  10  feet  from  the  boat's  stern. 
He  saw  Kingston  clinging  to  ropes  at  the 
overturned  boat's  edge. 

The  boat  was  drifting  away  from  Vickers, 
and  quickly.  Exhausted,  he  began  dog- 
paddling  faster  and  faster,  but  the  boat 
seemed  only  to  be  pulling  away,  eventually 
reaching  a  distance  of  about  100  feet.  Some- 
how, with  a  helpful  wave  or  two  and  the  last 
of  his  energy,  he  reached  a  rope  leading  to 
the  boat  just  as  it  righted  itself. 

The  rest  of  the  crew  scrambled  up  the 
companionway  to  find  the  mast  broken  and 
deep  cracks  zigzagging  through  the  deck. 
They  activated  an  emergency  beacon,  be- 
gan bailing,  and  prayed  they  could  make  it 
through  what  promised  to  be  a  long  night. 

7:00  p.m. 

Peter  Joubert,  a  wry  74-year-old  engi- 
neering professor  at  the  University  of 
Melbourne,  had  quickly  grown  tired  of 
fighting  the  waves  in  this,  his  27th  Hobart. 
The  spume  blasting  his  43-foot  Kingurra 
felt  like  a  pitchfork  jabbing  into  his  face; 
the  only  way  he  could  steer  was  to  wear 
goggles.  Around  six  he  curled  up  in  a  bunk 
and  fell  into  a  deep  sleep,  leaving  the  driv- 
ing to  the  group  of  younger  men  who  had 
the  energy  to  fight  the  waves. 

At  seven  Joubert  woke  with  a  start  to 
the  sound  of  a  "horrific  crash  like  none  I'd 
ever  heard  before."  The  boat  pitched  hard 
to  port,  and  he  felt  a  massive  pain  spread 
across  his  chest;  a  slumbering  crewman  in 
another  bunk  had  flown  across  the  cabin, 
slamming  into  his  ribs,  breaking  several 
and  rupturing  his  spleen,  Joubert  later 
learned.  As  seawater  gushed  into  the 
cabin,  he  lurched  out  of  the  bunk  and 
crawled  to  the  nav  station,  where  his  22- 
year-old  grandson  helped  him  flip  on 
the  pumps.  Glancing  up  the  companion- 
way,  he  saw  three  crewmen,  including  his 
friend  Peter  Meikle,  lifting  an  American 


named  John  Campbell,  32,  back  on  deel 

Just  then  Joubert  heard  someone  cr 
"Man  overboard!"  It  was  Campbell.  Hal 
way  back  onto  the  boat,  he  had  slipped  oi 
of  his  jacket  and  safety  harness  and  sli 
back  into  the  ocean,  wearing  nothing  bi 
long  underwear. 

Joubert  grabbed  the  radio.  "Mayday!  Ma 
day!  Mayday!  We  have  a  man  overboard! 
he  shouted. 

As  Joubert  began  to  go  into  shod 
Campbell  floated  swiftly  away  from  th 
boat.  Kingurra's  motor  wouldn't  start;  th 
storm  jib  was  shredded.  There  was  no  wt 
to  retrieve  him. 

"Mayday!  Mayday!,"  Joubert  repeate< 
"We  need  a  helicopter!" 

About  7:20  p.n 

Barry  Barclay,  the  37-year-old  winch  o] 
erator  on  a  Dauphin  SA  365  helicoptf 
operated  by  the  Victoria  Police  air  winj 
had  just  finished  refueling  at  his  base  i 
Melbourne  when  the  call  came  in  that  rai 
ers  were  in  trouble.  Scrambling  east  ov« 
the  mountains  known  as  the  Great  Divi< 
ing  Range,  Barclay  and  his  two  crewmate 
stopped  to  refuel  once  again,  at  the  di; 
airstrip  in  Mallacoota,  before  heading  oi 
into  the  howling  winds  in  Bass  Strait.  Fir: 
ordered  by  the  Maritime  Safety  Authority 
war  room  to  rescue  sailors  off  Stand  Asid* 
Barclay's  crew  detoured  en  route  whe 
word  came  of  a  man  overboard  off  Kingu 
ra.  Cutting  through  the  swirling  clouds  < 
speeds  topping  200  miles  an  hour,  the  hel 
copter  reached  Kingurra's  last  reported  pc 
sition  in  10  minutes— only  to  find  nothin 
there.  "I  think  we've  overshot  them!"  pile 
Daryl  Jones  shouted.  "I'm  heading  back!' 

Just  then  Barclay  spotted  a  red  flare  an 
ing  into  the  sky.  Jones  made  for  it.  It  wa 
from  Kingurra.  Barclay  hailed  the  boat  o 
his  radio.  In  a  shaky  voice  Joubert  told  hir 
Campbell  had  last  been  seen  about  30 
yards  off  the  port  bow.  Jones  wheeled  th 
copter  around  as  Barclay  scanned  the  sea 
below.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  se< 
Even  at  an  altitude  of  300  feet,  the  wave 
seemed  to  be  reaching  for  them,  trying  t 
suck  them  into  the  sea. 

"Got  something!"  yelled  Dave  Key,  ar 
other  crew  member.  Barclay  hung  out  of  th 
copter's  left-hand  door  and  saw  a  white  lit 
ring  winking  among  the  waves;  he  though 
he  saw  someone  waving  from  inside  it.  Bt 
as  they  neared  its  position,  the  ring  she 
high  in  the  air  and  flew  off,  tumbling  crazil 
over  the  wave  tops.  There  was  no  one  inside 

Just  then,  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye 
Barclay  caught  a  flash  of  movement.  Peei 
ing  down  through  the  spume,  he  could  jus 
make  out  a  man  in  the  water,  clad  in  blu 
long  Johns,  waving.  It  was  Campbell. 

"I've  got  him!  I've  got  him!,"  Barcla 
shouted. 


Hovering  above  him,  Barclay  played  out 

jundred  feel  of  wire  cable  and  slowly  low- 
;d  Key  into  the  ocean.  Three  times  he 
[Bed  and  lowered  Key,  like  a  tea  bag,  as 
I  waves  engulfed  him  and  drove  him  un- 
it When  Key  finally  reached  Campbell 

was  limp,  at  the  edge  of  consciousness, 
,d  unable  to  help  as  the  paramedic  tried 

slip  the  strop  over  his  head.  Eventually 
;y  got  him  into  the  strop,  and  Barclay  be- 

n  winching  them  toward  the  helicopter. 

Just  as  the  two  men  were  about  to  reach 
e  open  doorway,  the  winch  froze.  Barclay 
irriedly  cycled  through  a  series  of  switches, 
/ing  to  unlock  it.  It  was  no  use.  Campbell 
id  Key  hung  two  feet  below  the  doorway, 
dmpbell  too  exhausted  to  pull  himself  into 
e  copter.  Finally,  giving  up  on  the  winch, 
irelay  reached  down,  grabbed  Campbell 
'  his  underwear,  and  yanked  him  into  the 
rcraft.  Key  soon  followed.  Campbell  lay  on 
s  back,  saying  over  and  over,  "Thank  you 
ank  you  thank  you  thank  you." 

8:00  p.m. 
)y  late  Sunday  afternoon  Sayonara  had 
J  been  pushed  well  east  of  the  cyclonic 
inds  that  were  smashing  the  rest  of  the 
:et.  Eighty  miles  northeast  of  Tasmania, 
jwever,  Ellison's  boat  suddenly  began  to 
icounter  conditions  worse  than  anything  it 
id  seen  so  far.  A  high-pressure  system  had 
jveloped  east  of  Hobart,  and  where  it 
•ushed  against  the  raging  low  the  seas  had 
ken  on  the  character  of  an  industrial  clothes 
asher.  Sayonara  would  surge  to  the  top  of 
wave,  then  free-fall  three,  four,  sometimes 
/e  seconds  before  landing  in  the  trough  be- 
nd it.  On  deck,  this  sent  men  flying  up  to- 
ard  the  rigging,  then  slammed  them  down 
ird  each  time  the  boat  landed. 

When  Phil  Kiely,  the  44-year-old  head 
"  Oracle's  Australian  operation,  shattered 
s  ankle  and  had  to  be  tucked  into  a  bunk 
rithing  in  pain,  Ellison  began  to  grow 
orried.  It  wasn't  just  bones  breaking  that 
mcerned  Ellison;  it  was  the  boat.  At  least 
le  of  the  titanium  rope  connectors  on 
:ck  had  exploded.  The  port-side  jib  winch, 
ade  of  carbon  fiber  and  titanium,  had 
mply  levitated  from  the  deck. 

Ellison  had  just  gone  belowdecks  and 
imbed  into  a  bunk  when  he  noticed 
lark  Turner,  whom  everyone  called  Tug- 
)at,  tapping  the  carbon-fiber  hull  inside 
e  bow. 

"Tuggsy,  whaddya  doing?,"  Ellison  asked. 

"Trying  to  make  sure  the  boat's  O.K." 

Ellison  pulled  himself  out  of  the  bunk 
id  lurched  over  to  where  Turner  stood, 
he  constant  crash  of  the  waves,  Turner 
scovered,  had  caused  a  section  of  the  hull 

begin  delaminating,  or  wearing  through; 
was  the  worst  thing  that  could  happen  on 
carbon-hulled  vessel.  Turner  took  out  a 
lagic  Marker  and  drew  a  circle  around 


the  weakened  area.  There  was  no  telling 
how  long  they  had  before  it  gave  way. 

"This  is  wacko!,"  Ellison  shouted  at 
Mark  Rudiger,  the  serene  navigator.  "I'm 
not  sure  how  much  more  of  this  the  boat 
can  take."  Maybe,  Ellison  suggested,  it  was 
time  to  tack  upwind,  toward  the  shelter  of 
the  Tasmanian  coastline. 

"I'm  not  sure  that's  the  right  race  deci- 
sion." Rudiger  averred.  The  move  would 
give  Briiulahclla  a  chance  to  catch  them. 

"Well,  we  can't  win  the  race  if  the  boat 
sinks,"  Ellison  shot  back.  The  two  men 
talked  it  over  with  skipper  Chris  Dickson, 
who  like  Rudiger  was  reluctant  to  give 
Brindabella  an  opening.  But  in  the  end  it 
was  Ellison's  boat— and  Ellison's  life.  "Tack 
the  fucking  boat!"  he  ordered. 

11:00  p.m. 

By  the  time  Brian  Willey  began  his  shift 
in  the  Canberra  war  room  at  11,  chaos 
reigned.  Fifteen  blinking  epirb  beacons 
pleaded  for  help  on  his  computer  screen, 
but  there  was  no  way  to  tell  who  was  who, 
or  who  needed  rescue  the  most.  Almost 
every  yacht  in  distress  had  lost  its  mast, 
and  with  it  its  radio  aerials,  leaving  Willey 
and  his  dozen  co-workers  fumbling  in  the 
dark,  confused  and  depressed.  At  nightfall 
four  Australian  Navy  Sea  King  and  Sea- 
hawk  helicopters  had  flown  toward  the  race- 
course, but  while  the  navy  helicopters  had 
night-auto-hover  capabilities,  they  had  no 
night-vision  equipment.  Willey  was  reduced 
to  gathering  scattershot  and  unreliable  re- 
ports from  the  helicopters.  The  crews  were 
so  busy  battling  hurricane-force  winds,  nor- 
mal conversation  was  all  but  impossible. 

At  one  point  Steve  Francis,  the  56-year- 
old  former  air-traffic  controller  in  overall 
charge  of  rescue  efforts  that  Sunday  night, 
was  in  contact  with  one  of  the  helicopters 
when  he  heard  the  pilot  shout,  "Look  out 
for  that  wave!" 

Francis  thought  the  helicopter  had  gone 
down.  Then  the  pilot  came  back  on  for  a 
moment  before  shouting  again,  "Look  out 
for  that  fucking  wave!" 

A  burst  of  static  came  through  the 
phone.  Again  Francis  feared  the  worst.  But 
the  pilot  came  back  on  again.  "Sorry,  mate, 
had  a  bit  of  a  problem  there,"  he  reported. 
"Trying  to  stay  between  the  waves  and  the 
clouds,  you  know." 

Precious  hours  were  wasted  looking  for 
boats  that  no  longer  needed  rescue.  At  one 
point  Francis  discovered  that  several  yachts 
on  his  search  list  had  been  sighted,  safely  at 
anchor  in  the  harbor  at  Eden.  "They  musta 
run  outta  beer,"  he  grimly  cracked. 

When  Rob  Matthews  emerged  from  be- 
lowdecks to  take  his  turn  behind  the 
wheel  of  Business  Post  Naiad,  the  Tasma- 
nian boat  was  a  wreck.  The  splintered  mast 


lay  roped  to  the  deck.  Below,  the  contents 
of  the  refrigerator  had  spilled  out  and  were 
sloshing  about  in  eight  inches  of  water 
along  with  shattered  plates  and  cups;  the 
stove  had  broken  free  of  its  mounting  and 
was  careening  about  with  every  wave.  Bruce 
Guy,  the  boat's  owner,  flipped  on  the  pumps, 
but  they  jammed  with  debris  within  min- 
utes and  failed.  Reluctantly,  the  crew  had 
activated  an  epirb  and,  after  rigging  a  new 
aerial,  had  radioed  in  a  request  for  a  heli- 
copter evacuation. 

As  Matthews  took  the  helm,  flying  spume 
sandblasted  his  face.  Phil  Skeggs,  the 
easygoing  locksmith  and  the  boat's  least- 
experienced  sailor,  stood  beside  him  in  the 
cockpit,  shouting  out  compass  readings, 
as  Matthews  attempted  to  ram  the  boat 
through  waves  he  could  barely  see.  At  one 
point  the  moon  broke  through  the  clouds, 
giving  Matthews  a  view  of  the  enormous 
waves  just  as  they  crashed  onto  the  deck. 
He  decided  he  liked  it  better  in  the  dark. 

Just  past  11,  after  the  moon  disappeared, 
leaving  them  once  more  wrapped  in  dark- 
ness, Matthews  felt  the  familiar  sensation  as 
they  began  to  creep  up  the  face  of  what 
seemed  like  an  especially  large  wave.  Then, 
suddenly,  the  boat  was  on  its  port  side  and 
they  were  airborne  once  again,  falling  down 
the  face  of  the  wave.  In  midair  the  boat 
overturned,  landing  upside  down  in  the 
trough.  Plunged  underwater,  tangled  in  a 
morass  of  ropes  and  broken  equipment, 
Matthews  held  his  breath.  He  tried  to  re- 
main calm  as  he  waited  for  the  boat  to  sta- 
bilize, as  it  had  before.  When  it  didn't,  he 
attempted  to  shed  his  safety  harness  so  he 
could  swim  out  from  beneath  the  boat.  But 
he  couldn't  unfasten  the  hook.  Just  as  he 
was  running  out  of  breath,  a  wave  tossed 
the  boat  to  one  side,  allowing  a  shaft  of  air 
into  the  cockpit,  then  slammed  the  boat 
down  on  his  head  yet  again. 

Coughing  and  sputtering,  Matthews  was 
driven  underwater  once  more.  The  cockpit 
walls  jackhammered  his  head  and  shoul- 
ders. Now  convinced  that  the  boat  would 
not  right  itself,  he  struggled  again  to  get  out 
of  the  safety  harness.  Finally  managing  to 
undo  it,  he  kicked  free  of  the  boat  and  sur- 
faced at  the  stern,  where  he  grabbed  a  mass 
of  floating  ropes,  "hanging  on  like  grim 
death,"  as  he  later  put  it.  There  was  no  sign 
of  Skeggs.  "Phil!  Phil!"  he  began  shouting. 

The  scene  belowdecks  was  bedlam.  Wa- 
ter began  gushing  into  the  cabin  from  the 
companionway  as  the  six  men,  trapped 
upside  down,  struggled  to  find  their  foot- 
ing on  the  ceiling.  The  only  light  came 
from  headlamps  two  of  the  crew  had 
thought  to  grab,  which  now,  as  they  lurched 
about,  filled  the  cabin  with  a  crazy,  strobe- 
like effect.  Bruce  Guy  and  Steve  Walker, 
fearful  that  the  boat  was  sinking,  rushed  to 
clear  the  companionway  of  debris,  then 


AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


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Lussie  Race 


kicked  out  two  boards  that  blocked  their 

exit  to  the  sea  below.  In  a  minute  the  water 
level  stabilized  as  the  trapped  air  prevented 
more  seawater  from  entering,  leaving  the 
men  up  to  their  waists  in  water.  Guy  began 
trying  to  muscle  one  of  the  black  life  rafts 
out  the  companionway. 

"Bruce,  wait,"  Walker  said.  "We're  not 
taking  on  any  more  water.  You're  going  to 
get  another  wave  shortly.  I  reckon  it'll  flip 
us  back  over."  Just  then,  the  sound  of  a  wa- 
terfall, the  next  giant  wave,  filled  their  ears. 
"We're  goin'  over!"  someone  shouted. 

The  boat  flipped  once  more,  sending 
everyone  in  the  cabin  toppling.  As  the  boat 
righted  itself,  seawater  began  cascading  over 
the  cockpit  into  the  cabin.  Now  Walker  was 
certain  they  were  about  to  sink.  As  others 
leapt  by  him  to  wade  up  on  deck,  Guy  sud- 
denly slumped  into  the  water.  Walker 
grabbed  him  before  he  went  under.  He  held 
his  friend's  head  and  watched  as  his  eyes 
rolled  back,  then  shut.  Guy,  Walker  real- 
ized, was  having  a  massive  heart  attack;  be- 
fore he  could  do  anything,  Bruce  Guy  died 
in  his  arms.  Walker  dragged  him  to  a  bunk, 
where  he  cradled  his  head  and  attempted  to 
clear  his  mouth,  but  it  was  too  late. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  moments  before 
Business  Post  Naiad  righted  itself,  Rob 
Matthews  had  clung  to  the  side  of  the 
boat,  sitting  on  the  broken  mast  in  neck- 
deep  water.  As  the  waves  tore  at  him,  he 
saw  he  would  need  to  raise  himself  onto 
the  keel  or  risk  being  sucked  into  the  sea. 
Exhausted,  he  was  just  about  to  set  his 
feet  on  the  submerged  mast  when  the  boat 
began  to  right  itself.  To  his  dismay,  the 
mast  beneath  him  shot  upward,  flipping 
him  into  the  air  like  a  flapjack.  Matthews 
landed  with  a  crunch  in  the  cockpit  just 
as  the  boat  finished  rolling  over.  He 
looked  down  and  saw  Phil  Skeggs's  mo- 
tionless body,  wrapped  in  a  spaghetti  of 
ropes  on  the  floor  of  the  cockpit.  As  his 
crewmates  hustled  up  the  companionway 
and  administered  CPR,  Matthews  was  too 
exhausted  to  do  anything  but  watch.  Their 
efforts  were  in  vain.  Skeggs,  the  gentle 
locksmith,  had  drowned. 

About  4:00  A.M. 

The  orange-canopied  life  raft  holding 
John  Stanley  and  his  four  friends  from 
Winston  Churchill  began  to  disintegrate 
sometime  after  three  that  morning.  By  then 
everyone  aboard  was  fighting  hypothermia 
and  injuries.  An  outgoing  Sydney  attorney, 
John  Gibson— "Gibbo"  to  his  mates— had 
cut  two  of  his  fingers  down  to  the  bone  try- 
ing to  manhandle  a  rope  during  their 
rushed  exit  from  Churchill  12  hours  before. 
Stanley  had  broken  his  ankle  and  torn  a  net 


' 


of  ligaments  in  his  hip  when  a  wave  ha 
tumbled  the  raft,  wildly  throwing  the  fi\ 
men  together.  There  was  no  first-aid  ki 
nor,  aside  from  the  biscuit  Stanley  ha 
slashed  in  his  jacket,  any  food. 

The  real  problems  had  arisen  after  mic 
night.  An  unusually  large  wave  Stanle 
could  often  identify  the  big  ones  becaus 
they  sounded  like  freight  trains  had  tosse 
the  raft  upside  down,  leaving  all  five  me 
up  to  their  necks  in  the  water,  their  fee 
resting  on  the  submerged  canopy,  the  bo 
torn  of  the  raft  inches  above  their  heads.  ! 
was  impossible  to  right  the  raft  from  inside 
Someone  would  have  to  swim  out  throug 
the  submerged  canopy  opening,  with  n 
lifeline,  and  try  to  pull  them  upright.  Jimm 
Lawler,  the  Australian  representative  fc 
the  American  Bureau  of  Shipping,  said 
wasn't  possible.  He  couldn't  get  throug 
the  opening  wearing  a  life  vest,  and  wasn' 
willing  to  shed  his  vest. 

In  20  minutes  they  began  to  run  out  c 
air.  Stanley  found  himself  gasping  for  breatl 
To  get  air,  they  agreed  Lawler  would  us 
his  knife  to  cut  a  four-inch  hole  in  the  bo 
torn  of  the  raft.  He  did  so,  and  for  a  tim 
they  were  actually  comfortable.  But  then  : 
happened:  another  wave  flipped  the  ral 
upright  again.  Suddenly  the  five  men  foun< 
themselves  sitting  in  a  life  raft  with  a  cor 
stantly  growing  tear  in  its  bottom.  Th 
weight  of  their  bodies  gradually  rippei 
apart  the  underpinnings  of  the  raft.  In 
half-hour  they  were  forced  back  into  th 
water,  this  time  clinging  to  the  insides  o 
their  now  doughnut-shaped  raft.  They  trie 
to  maintain  their  spirits,  but  it  was  difficult 
Other  than  Gibson,  who  kept  up  a  stead 
patter  of  jokes,  the  men  were  too  tired  fc 
talk  much. 

In  the  darkness  before  dawn  no  on 
heard  the  black  wave  that  finally  got  then- 
One  moment  they  were  inside  the  raft 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  breathing  hard.  Th 
next  they  were  airborne,  hurtling  down  th 
face  of  the  gigantic  unseen  wave.  Stanle 
was  driven  deep  beneath  the  raft,  but  some 
how  managed  to  keep  his  hold  on  it.  Figh 
ing  to  the  surface,  he  looked  all  around  am 
saw  nothing  but  blackness.  "Is  everyom 
here?"  he  shouted. 

"Yeah!"  he  heard  a  sputtering  voice  ar 
swer  to  one  side.  It  was  Gibson,  the  onl 
one  of  the  five  who  had  worn  a  safety  hai 
ness  he  had  clipped  to  the  raft. 

Stanley  craned  his  head,  looking  for  th 
others.  His  heart  sank:  about  300  yard 
back  he  could  see  two  of  the  three  men 
He  was  never  sure  whom  he  missed 
Lawler,  John  Dean,  a  Sydney  attorney,  o 
Mike  Bannister.  All  three  men  were  gone. 

"We  can't  do  anything  for  them,"  Stan 
ley  said.  "It's  impossible." 

"Just  hang  on,"  Gibson  said.  "For  our 
selves." 


MAY     19  9 


Dawn,  Monday 
U  s  the  eastern  horizon  reddened  around 
B. 4:30,  the  scene  at  the  small  airport  in 
:;  resort  town  of  Merimbula  resembled 
mething  out  of  China  Beach.  At  first 
Iht  17  aircraft  were  sent  searching  for 
inston  Churchill.  The  second  priority,  cu- 
tusly,  was  finding  Glyn  Charles,  who,  in 
;  unlikely  event  he  was  still  alive,  would 
ve  been  in  the  water  more  than  12  hours. 
Around  six,  David  Dutton,  a  paramedic 
oard  one  of  the  SouthCare  helicopters  fly- 

1  out  of  Canberra,  spotted  a  dismasted 
cht  southeast  of  Eden.  Below  him,  Mid- 
iht  Special,  a  40-foot  Queensland  boat, 
is  rolling  violently.  The  boat  had  taken  on 

2  solemn  air  of  a  floating  hospital.  The 
jw,  nine  longtime  friends  who  sailed  out  of 
e  Mooloolaba  Yacht  Club,  near  the  resort 
y  of  Brisbane,  were  older  men,  most  in 
eir  50s,  with  a  variety  of  occupations  and 

i  even  wider  range  of  injuries.  Ian  Griffiths, 
lawyer,  had  a  broken  leg  and  crushed  carti- 
»e  in  his  back.  Neil  Dickson,  a  veteran 
;ean  sailor  who  at  49  was  the  youngest 
ew  member,  had  hit  his  head  against  the 
:bin  ceiling  during  a  rollover,  which  had 
locked  him  momentarily  unconscious  and 
ft  him  with  a  concussion.  Peter  Carter  had 
ushed  vertebrae  in  his  lower  back.  The  oth- 
s  had  collected  an  assortment  of  cracked 
)s  and  gashed  foreheads. 

On  Sunday  the  crew  had  surprised  them- 
Ives  by  surfing  into  Bass  Strait  in  18th  place, 
ad  they  not  ranked  so  high,  Roger  Barnett, 
e  yacht  club's  commodore,  felt,  they  might 
ive  headed  back  earlier.  As  it  was,  Midnight 
K'cial  had  plunged  south  through  the  moun- 
inous  waves  until  injuries  incapacitated 
uch  of  the  crew.  Around  three  p.m.  the  five 
en  who  jointly  owned  the  boat  had  gath- 
ed  belowdecks  and  engaged  in  a  lively  de- 
tte  about  whether  to  forge  on.  Dickson  re- 
11s  that  in  the  middle  of  this  discussion,  a 
*antic  wave  struck  the  boat,  flinging  Grif- 
hs  across  the  cabin,  breaking  his  leg  and  a 
rge  part  of  the  ship's  cupboard.  That  ended 
e  debate.  Sword  of  Orion's  three-o'clock  re- 
>rt  of  75-knot  winds  ahead  of  them  in  Bass 
rait  silenced  any  doubters. 

A  little  after  three  the  crew  started  the  en- 
ne  and  began  plowing  back  the  40  miles 
irthwest  toward  Gabo  Island.  Conditions 
jrsened  as  the  boat  fought  heavy  seas. 
Wee  Midnight  Special  was  slammed  on  its 
le,  tossing  the  crew  belowdecks,  breaking 
>ses  and  cracking  ribs.  Then,  later  that 
?ht,  a  giant  wave  crashed  out  of  the  dark- 
ss  directly  into  the  cockpit,  rolling  the 
ree-year-old  boat  through  a  360-degree  arc. 
indows  smashed  everywhere,  and  as  water 
:gan  pouring  into  the  crushed  cabin  below, 
rge  cracks  began  to  appear  in  the  deck, 
antically,  Neil  Dickson  began  stuffing  sleep- 
l  bags  into  the  widening  cracks  in  a  vain  at- 
npt  to  maintain  the  integrity  of  the  hull. 


When  waves  tore  the  sleeping  bags  out,  the 
crew  resorted  to  cramming  spinnaker  sails 
into  the  openings.  The  sails  did  the  trick,  but 
their  trailing  ropes  fouled  the  boat's  propeller, 
leaving  Midnight  Special  dead  in  the  water. 
The  radios  were  destroyed,  and  an  epirb  was 
activated.  As  red  flares  from  other  boats  lit 
the  sky  all  around  them,  those  who  could 
spent  the  rest  of  the  night  bailing. 

At  dawn  the  crew  spotted  a  P3C  Orion 
flying  overhead;  it  wagged  its  wings,  buoying 
their  spirits.  Not  long  after,  Dutton's  chop- 
per arrived,  and  he  motioned  for  crew  mem- 
bers to  jump  into  the  waves  and  begin  swim- 
ming toward  the  dangling  rescue  strop.  It 
was  decided  that  David  Leslie  should  go 
first.  He  was  their  doctor— well,  a  dermatolo- 
gist—and could  brief  the  rescuers  on  their  in- 
juries. Leslie  plunged  into  the  sea,  swam  to- 
ward Dutton,  and  slipped  his  upper  body 
into  the  strop.  Trevor  McDonough,  a  60- 
year-old  bricklayer,  and  Bill  Butler,  a  nursery 
owner,  stood  on  deck  and  watched  as  Leslie 
was  slowly  lifted  up  toward  the  helicopter. 
The  other  six  crew  members  stood  safely  be- 
lowdecks, at  the  bottom  of  the  companion- 
way,  swapping  smiles.  "We're  outta  here!" 
someone  said  joyfully. 

No  one  saw  the  wave.  It  hit  without 
warning  and,  as  Dutton  and  the  helicopter 
crew  looked  on  helplessly,  rolled  the  boat 
upside  down.  The  first  thing  Dickson  knew, 
he  was  on  his  hands  and  knees  in  the  pitch- 
dark  cabin,  with  water  inching  up  his 
thighs.  This  time  Dickson  wanted  no  part 
of  any  of  his  partners'  debate;  he  just  want- 
ed out.  Without  a  word  he  plunged  head- 
first into  the  flooded  companionway.  The 
exit  was  blocked  by  boards  and  debris,  but 
he  found  an  opening  about  two  feet  in  di- 
ameter and  managed  to  get  his  shoulders, 
then  his  waist  through  and  into  the  swirling 
ocean  outside.  But  then,  as  he  fought  to  get 
his  thighs  through  the  hole,  he  became 
stuck.  A  rope  had  looped  around  his  mid- 
section and  was  holding  him  tight  against 
the  boat.  Dickson  frantically  kicked  his 
legs,  trying  to  get  loose. 

Trapped  beneath  the  boat,  both  Mc- 
Donough and  Butler  fought  to  free  them- 
selves from  entangling  ropes;  neither  was 
able  to  do  so.  In  fact,  all  three  men— Dick- 
son, McDonough,  and  Butler— were  as  good 
as  dead.  And  then,  with  a  vicious  jerk,  the 
boat  swung  around  and  righted  itself.  After 
several  moments  spent  gasping  for  breath 
Dickson  ripped  himself  free  and  charged 
up  onto  the  deck,  where  he  was  met  by  this 
seriocomic  image:  Butler  standing  perfectly 
upright,  mummylike,  still  trapped  in  ropes. 
McDonough  lay  in  the  cockpit,  seawater 
streaming  from  his  nose. 

As  the  three  men  recovered,  they  were 
met  by  a  sight  that  left  no  one  laughing: 
Dutton's  helicopter,  low  on  fuel,  was  forced 
to  head  for  land.  As  the  helicopter  flew  off, 


Dickson  and  his  crewmates  could  do  noth- 
ing but  watch,  dumbfounded.  The  boat  be- 
neath was  sinking  slowly  by  the  stern,  and 
every  wave  threatened  to  roll  it  over  once 
more.  It  took  another  unnerving  half-hour 
before  a  second  helicopter  finally  rescued 
the  men  on  Midnight  Special. 

All  down  the  east  coast  of  New  South 
Wales  and  out  past  Gabo  Island,  the 
rescues  continued  in  the  first  hours  after 
dawn.  The  remaining  sailors  aboard  Sword 
of  Orion  scrambled  aboard  a  hovering  Sea- 
hawk,  while  a  medevac  out  of  Canberra 
winched  the  seven  survivors  off  Business 
Post  Naiad,  leaving  the  bodies  of  Phil 
Skeggs  and  Bruce  Guy  to  be  picked  up  lat- 
er. B-52  struggled  under  its  own  power  into 
Eden  harbor  just  after  lunchtime.  In  the 
hour  before  dawn  the  yacht's  port-side  win- 
dows had  imploded,  sending  gushers  of 
seawater  below;  the  crew  had  somehow 
managed  to  nail  wooden  planks  over  the 
windows  and  had  spent  the  rest  of  the 
morning  bailing  with  buckets.  Tony  Mow- 
bray's Solo  Globe  Challenge  would  be  one 
of  the  last  to  reach  port,  limping  into  Eden 
on  Wednesday  morning. 

Late  Monday  afternoon  the  lifeboat  car- 
rying Richard  Winning  and  three  other  sur- 
vivors from  Winston  Churchill  was  spotted, 
and  everyone  was  winched  aboard  a  waiting 
helicopter.  Like  those  aboard  Churchill's 
other  raft,  Winning's  group  had  capsized 
twice  during  the  night.  Unlike  the  occu- 
pants of  the  other  raft,  however,  Winning 
had  bravely  swum  outside  and  forcibly  right- 
ed the  rubber  inflatable,  which  had  then 
survived  the  night  intact. 

9:00  p.m. 

Night  began  to  fall  with  no  sign  of 
Churchill's  second  life  raft.  At  the  res- 
cue center  in  Canberra,  hope  was  dwin- 
dling that  the  men  would  be  found.  At 
Merimbula  the  civilian  aircraft— those 
without  any  night-rescue  capabilities— began 
landing,  one  by  one.  None  had  seen  any- 
thing that  looked  remotely  like  a  life  raft. 
Then,  just  after  nine,  a  P3C  Orion  on  its 
way  back  to  Merimbula  saw  a  light  flashing 
in  the  darkening  ocean  below.  Descending 
to  500  feet,  the  pilot  spied  two  men  cling- 
ing to  a  shredded  orange  life  raft.  It  was 
John  Stanley  and  "Gibbo"  Gibson,  still 
alive  after  28  hours  in  the  water. 

"Gibbo!."  Stanley  rasped,  swinging  a 
handheld  strobe.  "I  think  they've  seen  us!" 

Within  minutes,  during  which  the  sun 
set.  Lieutenant  Commander  Rick  Neville 
had  his  navy  Seahawk  hovering  70  feet 
above  Stanley  and  Gibson.  Petty  Officer 
Shane  Pashley  winched  down  a  wire  into 
the  waves  below  and.  as  Neville  fought  to 
maintain  position  in  the  gusting  winds, 
managed   to  get   a   rescue   strop   around 


AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Vussie  Race 


Gibson.  As  the  two  men  were  lifted  sky- 
ward, a  terrific  gust  blew  the  Seahawk 
sideways,  dumping  the  pair  back  into  the 
waves  Neville  swung  the  chopper  around 
once  more,  and  Ibis  time  the  two  water- 
logged men  were  successfully  winched 
aboard. 

It  was  too  much  for  Neville.  His  Radall 
auto-hover  system  was  being  overtaxed  by 
the  winds,  and  he  was  unwilling  to  send 
Pashley  back  into  the  ocean.  Stanley,  he  de- 
cided, would  have  to  make  it  into  the  res- 
cue strop  on  his  own.  As  Neville  maneu- 
vered the  Seahawk  back  over  the  raft,  Pash- 
ley dangled  the  strop  down  into  the  sea, 
and  Stanley  somehow  grabbed  it  and  hoist- 
ed his  upper  body  into  it.  The  winch  lifted 
him  into  the  air,  but  when  he  was  20  feet 
above  the  waves,  Stanley  felt  a  weight 
around  his  ankles  and  realized,  to  his  dis- 
may, that  he  was  still  hooked  to  his  life  raft, 
which  was  sagging  in  midair  below  him. 
Reluctantly  he  shrugged  himself  out  of  the 
strop  and  dropped  like  a  stone  back  into 
the  sea,  where  he  managed  to  unhook  the 
raft.  Once  again  the  strop  was  dangled  to 
him,  and  once  again  he  got  into  it.  This 
time  everything  worked.  After  more  than  a 
day  in  the  ocean,  Stanley  and  Gibson  were 
on  their  way  home. 


8:00  a.m.,  Tuesday 

As  Sayonara  lacked  the  last   mile  up 
the  Derwent  River  toward  the  Hobart 

docks,  a  small  launch  with  a  bagpiper 
aboard  swung  alongside.  It  was  the  most 
Stunning  sunrise  Ellison  had  ever  seen, 
splashes  of  rose  and  pink  and  live  different 
hues  of  blue,  and  as  the  pipes  played  a 
mournful  tune,  the  enormity  of  what  the 
fleet  had  endured  hit  all  23  men  aboard 
the  winning  yacht.  Sayonara's  sideband  ra- 
dio had  shorted  out,  and  it  hadn't  been  un- 
til late  Monday  afternoon  that  the  crew 
learned  of  the  tragedies  in  their  wake.  As 
they  reached  the  dock  and  piled  out  to  hug 
their  loved  ones,  Ellison  was  overwhelmed. 
"It  was  an  incredible  moment  of  clarity,  the 
beauty  and  fragility  of  life,  the  preciousness 
of  it  all;  that's  when  people  appreciated 
what  we  had  been  through,"  he  recalls. 
"Having  said  that,  if  I  live  to  be  a  thousand 
years  old,  I'll  never  do  it  again.  Never." 

Amid  all-too-predictable  recriminations, 
Hugo  van  Kretschmar,  commodore  of  the 
Cruising  Yacht  Club  of  Australia,  stoutly  de- 
fended the  club's  decision  to  continue  the 
race  despite  warnings  of  bad  weather.  Even 
as  he  announced  an  internal  investigation, 
van  Kretschmar  pointed  out,  correctly,  that 
the  decision  whether  to  race  is  traditionally 
left  up  to  the  skipper  of  each  boat.  Yacht- 
club  officials,  after  all,  had  the  same  forecasts 
that  every  skipper  had.  As  a  result,  few  of 


the  sailors  who  survived  the  race  were  wi 
\i\y  lo  attack  the  organizers.  One  exceptic 
was  Peter  Joubert  ol  Kingurra,  who  emerge 
from  several  weeks  in  the  hospital  sharp 
critical  "I  race  management.  "The  race  o 
ganizers  weren't  properly  in  touch  with  wh; 
was  going  on  out  there  they  just  didn 
know  enough,"  Joubert  says.  "It's  only 
yacht  race.  It's  not  a  race  to  the  death 
Outside  Australia,  the  judgment  was  just  { 
harsh.  "They  should  have  waited;  there 
ample  precedent  for  waiting,"  notes  Gai 
Jobson,  the  ESPN  sailing  analyst.  "But  rac 
officials  were  under  a  lot  of  pressure.  Li\ 
TV,  all  these  people,  a  major  holiday." 

Three  days  after  Sayonara  crossed  tl 
finish  line  more  than  5,000  people  gathere 
on  Hobart's  Constitution  Dock  for  a  m 
morial  service  for  the  six  men  who  died  i 
the  race.  The  funerals  of  Bruce  Guy.  Ph 
Skeggs,  James  Lawler,  and  Mike  BannisK 
were  to  follow  shortly;  the  bodies  of  Joh 
Dean  and  Glyn  Charles  have  never  bee 
found.  "We  will  miss  you  always;  we  wi 
remember  you  always;  we  will  learn  froi 
the  tragic  circumstances  of  your  passing 
van  Kretschmar  said  as  the  muted  bells  < 
St.  David's  Cathedral  rang  out.  "May  th 
everlasting  voyage  you  have  now  embarke 
on  be  blessed  with  calm  seas  and  gent 
breezes.  May  you  never  have  to  reef  c 
change  a  headsail  in  the  night.  May  yoi 
bunk  always  be  warm  and  dry."  D 


Dominick  Dunne 

CONTINUED     FROM      PAGE      157      Switching      Of 

place  cards  at  the  last  minute,  and  I  was 
quite  aware  of  it  that  evening.  "Thank  God 
I  didn't  ask  Ethel,"  I  heard  the  hostess  say 
in  passing  as  she  re-entered  the  living  room 
to  greet  Sarge  and  Eunice  Shriver. 

Hi,  Max.  It's  a  little  heavy  going,  isn't  it?  I 
had  to  have  two  cups  of  coffee. 

—Senator  Ted  Kennedy,  overheard  talking 

to  Georgia  Democratic  senator  Max  Cleland 

after  one  lengthy  session  of  speeches. 

It  was  interesting  to  watch  it  all  from 
above.  During  breaks,  you  could  hear 
senatorial  conversations  wafting  up.  Demo- 
cratic senator  Bob  Kerrey  of  Nebraska 
took  the  most  copious  notes.  He  had  an  8- 
by-10-inch  notebook,  and  he  wrote  on  both 
sides  of  the  paper  in  complete  sentences. 
After  observing  him  for  weeks,  I  began  to 
wonder  if  maybe  he  was  using  the  time  to 
write  a  book.  Republican  senator  Bill  Roth 
of  Delaware  has  the  worst  toupee.  House 
manager  Steve  Chabot  of  Ohio  has  the 
worst  comb-over;  it  comes  from  two  direc- 
tions. The  most  attentive  individual  was 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


96-year-old  Strom  Thurmond,  Republican 
from  South  Carolina,  who  sat  up  rigidly 
listening  to  every  word  and  never  once 
nodded  off.  He  went  over  to  presidential 
counsel  Cheryl  Mills  after  she  delivered 
her  speech  and  gallantly  congratulated  her 
on  it,  even  though  he  was  going  to  vote  to 
remove  the  president  from  office.  Jesse 
Helms  did  nod  off,  fairly  often  in  fact,  with 
his  head  down  on  his  chest.  Colorado  sen- 
ator Ben  Nighthorse  Campbell,  who  used 
to  be  a  Democrat  and  changed  to  a  Re- 
publican, wears  the  only  ponytail  in  the 
Senate.  Without  any  sort  of  fanfare,  he 
would  pay  for  coffee  for  the  tourists  wait- 
ing in  line  outside  the  Capitol  to  get  in  to 
watch  the  trial.  During  breaks,  Judge 
Rehnquist  had  tea  and  Edy's  ice  cream 
served  to  him  by  Senate  doorkeepers. 

I  went  to  a  Super  Bowl  Sunday  party  at 
the  Georgetown  home  of  Lloyd  Cutler, 
former  White  House  counsel  for  President 
Clinton,  and  his  wife,  the  artist  Polly  Kraft. 
Polly's  another  one  of  the  social  forces  in 
Washington.  That  was  where  I  got  to  meet 
presidential  special  counsel  Gregory  Craig, 
one  of  the  very  classy  members  of  the 
president's  legal  team,  who  had  given  a 
great  speech  early  in  the  trial.  He  couldn't 


talk  about  the  trial,  being  part  of  it,  but  h 
talked  about  his  regular  Sunday-mornin 
football  games  with  Stuart  Taylor  of  Th 
National  Journal  and  Evan  Thomas  of  Neva 
week,  two  of  President  Clinton's  severe; 
critics.  That's  Washington,  people  saic 
Evan  Thomas  asked  me  if  I  knew  Warre 
Beatty's  phone  number.  He's  writing 
book  about  Bobby  Kennedy  and  neede 
some  information.  Three  of  the  couples 
knew  at  the  party  had  just  come  bac 
from  a  large  and  very  successful  hous 
party  at  Camp  David,  given  by  Bill  an 
Hillary,  as  they  all  called  the  First  Coupls 
They  didn't  want  to  be  identified,  but 
found  out  from  one  of  the  group  that  Ha 
vey  Weinstein,  the  co-chairman  of  Mir; 
max,  and  his  wife  had  been  there.  Weir 
stein  took  along  a  print  of  Shakespeare  i 
Love,  but  Hillary  had  already  seen  it  at  th 
premiere  in  New  York.  Carly  Simon  an 
her  husband,  James  Hart,  were  also  i 
Camp  David,  and  a  couple  of  Wall  Stree 
billionaires.  Everyone  spoke  about  the  ter 
derness  that  had  existed  between  Bill  an 
Hillary  throughout  the  weekend.  "Ther 
was  enormous  affection,"  one  said.  "W 
took  wonderful  walks,"  said  another.  "Th 
president  was  fascinating."  All  their  memc 
ries  were  of  a  tranquil  nature.  I  had  to  rt 


,nd  myself  that  that  tranquillity  existed  in 
S  midst  of  an  impeachment  trial,  which 
is  to  pick  up  again  the  following  morn- 
g.  People  said  that  the  president  thrives 
chaos. 

inda  Tripp  told  the  grand  jury  that  one 
»jof  her  jobs  at  the  Pentagon  was  to  sort 
it  photographs  of  the  president.  In  her 
Bee  she  had  jumbo  shots  of  Clinton 
th  members  of  different  branches  of  the 
ilitary  and  the  government,  which  are 
ounted  on  pressboard  and  hung  in  the 
hite  House  in  a  constantly  changing  ex- 
bition  to  depict  the  president's  activities, 
hen  Monica  Lewinsky  met  Tripp  in  her 
fice  she  saw  the  jumbo  shots,  asked  for 
le,  and  received  it,  and  so  the  unlikely  and 
teful  friendship  be- 
'een  the  two  women 
Kan.  That  such  a  rela- 
niship  should  have 
sn  brought  about  by  a 
lance  encounter  over  a 
loto  blowup  of  Bill  Clin- 
n— whom  one  woman 
athed  and  the  other 
Dman  loved— is  better 
an  any  novelist  could 
ake  up.  It's  just  too 
r-fetched.  If  I  were  to 
rite  the  story  as  a 
>vel,  I'd  play  into  the 
*ht-wing  conspiracy 
eory  and  have  the 
mbo  shots  of  Clinton 

Tripp's  office  be  a 
tup  to  lure  the  love- 
:k  former  intern  into 
e  older  woman's  lair 
r  the  nefarious  business  of  bringing  down 
e  president. 

I  wonder  what  kind  of  life  Linda  Tripp 
ill  have  ahead  of  her.  Friendless,  I  would 
ink,  although  her  Pentagon  job  is  proba- 
y  secure  for  life.  In  March  of  this  year  I 
:ard  her  on  television  with  Cokie  Roberts 
id  Sam  Donaldson,  calling  Roberts  Cok- 

and  Donaldson  Sam— like  the  star  she 
is  become  with  her  new  look— and  telling 
iem  that  if  she  were  to  write  a  book, 
lonica  Lewinsky  would  be  only  a  chapter, 
he  majority  of  the  book,  she  said,  would 
;al  with  what  she  knows  about  the  Clin- 
n  White  House,  including  Hillary  Clinton, 
id  the  implication  was  that  she  knows 
lenty.  It's  not  a  book  I  would  ever  read, 
it  at  least  she  has  a  famous  agent. 

n  the  novel,  I'd  probably  have  to  have  a 
.murder  too,  or  it  wouldn't  seem  like  one 
F  my  books.  There  was  obviously  no  mur- 
sr  in  the  impeachment  story,  or  so  I 
lought,  but  then  the  darndest  thing  hap- 
ened:  one  fell  right  into  my  lap.  Diffi- 
ilties  with  a  new  computer  led  me  to  an 


expert  who  not  only  solved  my  technical 
problems  but  also  flashed  a  badge  and  re- 
vealed to  me  that  he  was  a  Washington, 
D.C.,  cop.  He  asked  if  I  had  ever  heard  of 
a  girl  named  Mary  Caitrin  Mahoney,  a  for- 
mer White  House  intern.  I  hadn't.  Known 
as  Caity,  she  had  worked  on  Bill  Clinton's 
campaign  in  1992.  Following  his  victory, 
she  obtained  a  job  as  a  White  House  in- 
tern, giving  tours.  She  left  the  White  House 
to  get  a  degree  in  women's  studies  at  Tow- 
son  State  University,  near  Baltimore.  Then 
she  returned  to  Washington  and  took  a 
job  as  the  night  manager  of  a  Starbucks 
coffee  shop  on  the  edge  of  Georgetown. 
There  she  and  two  fellow  employees  were 
murdered  gangland-style  on  July  6,  1997,  as 
they  were  cleaning  up  after  closing  time. 


LONG-LOST  FRIENDS 

Dominick  Dunne  and  Lucianne  Goldberg 

at  a  book  party  at  the  Monkey  Bar 

in  New  York,  January  1998,  nearly  two 

years  after  she  first  mentioned 

Linda  Tripp  to  him  and  shortly  before 

they  stopped  speaking. 


Ten  shots  from  two  different  guns  were 
fired,  at  least  three  of  them  into  Caity  Ma- 
honey. The  fact  that  the  gunfire  was  not 
heard  by  neighbors  on  a  quiet  Sunday  night 
led  some  to  speculate  that  silencers  had 
been  used.  Nearly  unrecognizable,  Caity 
Mahoney  had  been  shot  first  in  the  chest, 
police  believed.  She  must  have  raised  her 
hands  to  shield  herself,  because  one  bullet 
had  pierced  her  hands  and  hit  her  face. 
Then  she  was  shot  in  the  back  of  the  head. 
Although  there  were  no  signs  of  forced  en- 
try, and  nothing  was  taken  from  the  cash 
register,  and  the  safe,  which  had  more  than 
$10,000  in  it,  was  not  opened,  the  police 
categorized  the  triple  murder  as  an  attempt- 
ed robbery.  On  March  6  of  this  year,  Carl 
Cooper,  a  29-year-old  man  with  a  criminal 
record,  was  charged  with  the  murders. 


During  this  period  of  humiliation  for  the 
First  Couple,  former  senator  Bob  Dole, 
whom  Clinton  had  defeated  in  1996  for  the 
highest  office  in  the  land,  was  a  constant 
presence  in  television  commercials,  discuss- 
ing erectile  dysfunction  for  Viagra,  while 
his  wife,  Elizabeth,  looking  fit  and  satis- 
fied, flirted  with  throwing  her  hat  into  the 
ring  for  the  presidency. 

Elsewhere  in  the  city,  in  certain  posh 
houses  where  ambassadors  come  to 
dinner  instead  of  politicians,  the  impeach- 
ment and  the  president  were  tut-tutted 
over  in  short  order,  and  conversation 
quickly  moved  on  to  other  things,  such 
as  the  funeral  in  Upperville,  Virginia,  of 
the  nonagenarian  billionaire  Paul  Mellon, 
who  died  on  February 
1,  leaving  much  of  his 
fortune  to  the  National 
Gallery  in  Washing- 
ton. Bunny  Mellon,  his 
widow,  who  had  been 
such  a  great  friend  of 
Jacqueline  Kennedy 
Onassis's,  was  to  re- 
ceive $110  million  out- 
right. Hubert  de  Given- 
chy,  the  retired  coutu- 
rier who  had  dressed 
Bunny  Mellon  for  years, 
arrived  from  Paris  with 
the  hat  she  was  to  wear 
at  the  funeral.  There 
was  consternation  over 
whether  the  woman  well 
known  for  many  years 
as  Mellon's  mistress, 
old  now  and  ill,  would 
attend.  She  didn't,  but  there  was  a  place  for 
her.  Nothing  trashy  about  that. 

One  night  Jeffrey  Toobin  and  I  went  to 
the  Palm  for  dinner.  Jeffrey  is  writing 
a  book  about  the  impeachment.  That  day 
in  the  gallery  he  had  passed  me  a  note 
about  Cheryl  Mills  during  her  brilliant 
speech:  "Don't  you  love  her?"  I  did.  The 
Palm,  which  is  the  most  fun  place  in  town, 
was  jumping  with  the  media  crowd.  There's 
Roger  Cossack  of  Burden  of  Proof . . .  There's 
Georgette  Mosbacher.  She's  here  for  the  Re- 
publican National  Committee  annual  meet- 
ing. Jeffrey  and  I  had  been  together  at  the 
O.  J.  Simpson  trial.  We  saw  things  the 
same  way.  He  referred  to  one  of  the  House 
managers  as  "the  Pervert"  because  of  his 
obsessive  interest  in  the  particulars  of  the 
sexual  behavior  of  Monica  and  Bill,  as  de- 
tailed in  the  Starr  report.  Later,  we  joined 
P.  J.  O'Rourke's  table  for  coffee.  P.J.  hates 
the  president,  but  his  diatribe  was  hilari- 
ous. An  attractive  lady  who  had  worked  at 
one  of  the  networks  told  a  story  of  being 
sent  out  to  a  golf  course  to  tell  the  presi- 


A Y     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


ijirmiN 


Fashion 

Cover:  Natalie  Portman's  Prada  shirl  from  I 

tii  |ues  nalio 

Page  48:  Bi  >N  >n  ri  |hl  Prada  dress  fri  im  Prada  b    ilii  |i 

/vide. 
Page  56:  Ml  hael  Shnayerson  styled  by  Nicole  LePage; 

li  Devilt. 
Page  131:  Mena  Suvari's  Doli  e  &  I  iabbarn  i  dress  from 

ih  Woknin  lor  Celestine. 
Page  147:  Nad  ille  Pi  irlman  s  |ohn  (  ■olliano  dress  by  spe- 
cial  ordei  fri  im  Bergdorl  Goodman,  N.N  t 
Pages  148-49:  John  Galliano  dress  fiom  Nemu  in  Mi  n 
cus  I  A    I  lei  cues  panls  from  Hermes,  NYC 
Page  151:  Linda  Allard  for  Ellen  Tracy  shiil  from  Saks  Fifth 
Avenue  stoies  nationwide. 

Pages  166-67:  Judit  Polgar's,  Sofia  Polgar's,  and 
Zsuzsa  Polgar's  Jennifer  Tyler  sweaters  from  Jennifer  Tyler, 
NYC;  for  Young  Cheol  Yoon  items,  call  9 1 7-767-95 1 9; 
Prada  shoes  from  Prada,  NYC 

Beauty  and  Grooming 

Cover:  Natalie  Portman's  hair  styled  with  Ready  to 
Wear  by  John  Frieda.  All  makeup  from  Chanel  On  her 
eyes,  Sculpting  Brow  Pencil  in  Smoky  Brown;  on  her  lips, 
Creme  Lipstick  in  Coco  Burgundy.  Sally  Hershberger  for 
Sheer  Blonde,  Jeanine  Lobell  for  Stila  Cosmetics. 
Page  52:  John  Richardson's  grooming  by  Lauia  de  Leon 
for  Susan  Price,  Inc. 

Page  56:  Michael  Shnayerson's  grooming  by  Assumpta 
Clohessy  for  Suson  Price,  Inc.;  Krista  Smith's  hair  and  make- 
up by  Eiic  Barnard  for  Cloutier. 
Page  108:  Virginia  Carde  for  Jean  Owen. 
Page  1 10:  Dick  Snyder's  grooming  by  Tatijana  Shoan. 
Page  131:  Mena  Suvari's  makeup  from  Clarins.  On  her 
face,  Matte  Powder  Compact  Foundation  S.P.F.  15  in  Petal 
Beige;  on  her  lips,  Lipstick  in  Sheer  Boysenberry.  Robert 
Steinken  and  Ulli  Schober  (or  Celestine. 
Page  132:  Christopher  Buckley's  grooming  by  Tatijana 
Shoan;  Basil  Walter's  grooming  by  Katrina  Borgstrom  for 
Susan  Price,  Inc. 

Page  151:  Mark  Anthony  for  the  Wall  Group;  Susan 
Sterling  for  Marek  &  Associates. 

Pages  166-67:  Stacey  Ross  for  Bradley  Curry  Man- 
agement; Regina  Harris  for  L'Atelier;  Gina  Crozier  for  Art 
Department. 

Pages  178-79:  Marc  Lopez  and  Chanchan  for  Brigitte 
Hebant;  Attracta  Courtney  for  Debbie  Walters. 

Photographs  and  Miscellany 

Cover:  Rick  Floyd  lor  Smashbox  NYC. 
Page  74:  From  Associated  Press/APTN 
Page  80:  Courtesy  of  Cable  News  Network, 
Page  112:  Top,  from  Corbis/Bettmann 
Page  116:  Bottom,  from  Archive  Photos 
Page  132:  Bottom,  second  from  left,  by  Michel  Benha- 
mou  and  Serge  Dufour/Corbis;  right,  by  Xavier  Martin/Jet 
Set  Denis  Taranto. 

Pages  158-59:  From  PPL/Sipa  Press. 
Pages  160-61:  From  PPL. 

Pages  162-63:  Large  photograph  from  Herald  Sun/ 
Sipa  Press 

Pages  164-65:  Large  photograph  from  PPL/Sipa  Press; 
inset  from  Reuters/MAXPPP 

Pages  169-75:  All  paintings  courtesy  of  the  Matthew 
Marks  Gallery. 

Page  169:  From  the  collection  of  PaineWebber  Group,  Inc. 
Page  172:  Painting  from  the  collection  of  Helen  Harring- 
ton Marden. 

Page  1 73:  Cold  Mountain  2  from  the  collection  of  the 
Hirshhorn  Museum  and  Sculpture  Garden,  Smithsonian 
Institution,  the  Holenia  Purchase  Fund,  in  memory  of  Joseph 
H.  Hirshhorn;  Hydra  Study  from  the  collection  of  the 
University  of  Michigan  Museum  of  Art,  Ann  Arbor. 
Pages  174-75:  From  a  private  collection. 
Page  183:  From  the  Eudora  Welty  Collection/Mississippi 
Department  of  Archives  and  History 
Page  190:  From  the  Duke  Ellington  Collection,  N.MAH. 
Archive  Center,  Smithsonian  Institution. 
Page  192:  From  the  Archive  of  Contemporary  Music. 
Page  194:  Bottom,  courtesy  of  David  Hajdu. 


VANITY     FAIR 


I) 


I), 


OIIIIIIKk    I'lllllK 


dent  thai  his  interview  with  an  important 
newsperson  would  begin  in  the  clubhouse 

in  20  minutes.  She  said  the  president 
turned  to  his  companion  in  the  golf  cart 
and  said  about  her,  "Nice  ass."  Although 
she  was  a  Democrat,  she  said,  her  admira- 
tion for  him  evaporated  on  the  spot. 

"Yeah,  hut  what  arc  we  gonna  da  when  J 'in 
seventy-five  and  I  have  to  pee  thirty  times 
a  day'.'" 

—President  Clinton  to  Monica  Lewinsky, 

discussing  their  possible  togetherness  after 

his  term  in  office,  from  Monica's  Story, 

by  Andrew  Morton. 

4T'm  beginning  to  change  my  feelings 
JL  about  the  president,"  I  said  on  the  tele- 
phone to  a  friend  in  New  York. 

"You're  just  being  influenced  by  Sally 
Quinn,"  she  replied,  for  she  had  shared  my 
admiration  for  Clinton. 

"No,  no.  I  got  there  myself,"  I  protested. 

After  two  weeks  in  town,  I  had  stopped 
saying,  "It's  only  about  a  blow  job."  It  didn't 
sound  convincing  anymore.  The  Willard  ho- 
tel, where  I  was  staying,  was  separated  from 
the  White  House  by  only  the  Treasury  build- 
ing. On  my  walks,  I  always  went  by  the 
White  House  and  stopped  to  stare  in.  One 
night,  during  my  fourth  week  in  Washington, 
I  was  looking  in  at  the  Oval  Office  from  be- 
hind the  fence  when  a  really  cheap  thought 
popped  into  my  head.  I  wondered  if  any  of 
the  president's  semen  had  missed  Monica's 
dress  and  splattered  onto  the  carpet.  It  was 
that  thought  that  did  it  for  me.  Recrimi- 
nations, long  harbored,  erupted.  He  had 
trashed  that  office  the  way  some  rock  stars 
trash  hotel  rooms.  However  you  look  at  it, 
there  was  never  any  beauty  or  dignity  in  the 
Clinton-Lewinsky  romance.  This  was  no  Ed- 
ward VIII  and  Mrs.  Simpson.  From  the  be- 
ginning it  was  a  lurid  arrangement,  about 
getting  off,  or  getting  to  the  point  of  getting 
off  and  then  holding  it  back— as  if  that  were 
not  violating  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  up- 
stairs—except for  that  one  time  when  he 
stained  her  dress  and  launched  the  words 
"semen"  and  "blow  job"  into  everyday  con- 
versations all  across  America. 

At  a  Lincoln's-birthday  party  given  by 
Washington  Post  writer  Walter  Pincus 
and  his  wife,  Ann,  the  star  of  the  night  was 
presidential  aide  Sidney  Blumenthal,  who 
was  very  much  in  the  news  after  his  former 
friend  Christopher  Hitchens  signed  an  affi- 
davit casting  doubt  on  the  truth  of  his  state- 
ment—made under  oath  in  his  videotaped 
deposition  shown  in  the  Senate— that  he 
had  not  spread  the  word  that  Monica  Lew- 
insky was  a  stalker.  It  was  the  talk  of  the 


town  lor  several  days  and  much  writte 
about  in  The  Washington  Post  and  The  Nc 
York  Times.  It  had  been  the  lead  story  th; 
week  on  Tim  Russert's  Meet  the  I'ress 
was  speaking  to  Jackie  Blumenthal,  Sit 
ney's  wife,  whom  I  had  never  met.  We  wei 
talking  about  her  position  as  head  of  th 
White  House  fellows  program.  Sudden! 
she  said,  "Oh,  dear."  I  said,  "What?"  Sh 
said,  "Someone  just  came  in  who  I  assure 
Sidney  wouldn't  be  here."  I  turned  and  sa' 
Vernon  and  Ann  Jordan  coming  into  th 
room.  Vernon  was  making  his  usual  ma 
sive  entrance,  wonderfully  dressed  as  a 
ways,  and  people  were  greeting  him.  I  sa' 
that  Sidney  saw  Vernon  coming  toward  u 
Vernon  spoke  to  Jackie.  To  me  he  saic 
"What's  the  first  line  of  your  article  goin 
to  be?"  Then  he  turned  and  stood  face-t< 
face  with  Sidney.  Vernon  said,  "I  kept  th 
chair  warm  for  you."  He  was  referring  t 
the  red  leather  chair  on  which  they  ha 
both  sat  during  the  videotaping  of  their  di 
positions.  Then  both  of  them  smiled,  an 
they  shook  hands.  I  don't  know  what  th; 
moment  meant,  but  if  I  ever  use  that  seen 
in  a  novel,  I  expect  to  find  out. 

There  was  a  bomb  scare  in  the  Senat 
within  a  half-hour  of  the  president's  b 
ing  acquitted.  Police  and  sniffing  dogs  wei 
everywhere.  People  poured  down  the  stai 
ways  to  evacuate  the  building.  Merri  Bake 
from  the  Senate  Press  Gallery,  introduce 
me  to  Senator  Robert  Byrd  of  West  Vi 
ginia,  who  was  ahead  of  me  on  the  stair; 
leaving  the  building  with  his  staff.  The  sei 
ator,  still  dapper  at  81,  wears  bow  ties  an 
colorful  vests.  I  had  heard  him  give  an  ii 
terview  to  Lisa  Myers  of  NBC  in  which  h 
said  that  he  was  troubled  by  the  arroganc 
of  the  president  when  he  had  his  victor 
rally  with  House  Democrats  right  after  b< 
ing  impeached.  Nevertheless,  Byrd  ha 
voted  to  acquit.  "I  wrote  my  speech  1 
times,"  he  told  me,  "and  I  was  only  halfwa 
through  when  the  chief  justice  told  me  the 
I'd  spoken  for  22  minutes."  His  retinu 
continued  to  hurry  him  along.  Just  ther 
Eunice  Shriver  and  Patricia  Lawford  rushe 
past  in  another  direction,  behind  Senate 
Kennedy,  who  was  being  pursued  by  a  tek 
vision  crew. 

"Hi,  Dominick,"  Pat  said.  "Hi,  Pat,' 
replied.  It  was  the  first  time  we  had  spc 
ken  in  years. 

Both  Barbara  Walters  and  Sally  Quin 
had  told  me  in  advance  that  I'd  be  sui 
prised  by  Monica  Lewinsky.  She's  not  at  a 
the  Valley  Girl  you  think  she's  going  to  b( 
each  of  them  said  in  a  different  way.  Bai 
bara  was  preparing  to  interview  her,  an 
she  was  having  trouble  with  Ken  Starr  ove 
Monica's  release.  Sally  had  met  her  th 
year  before  at  a  book  party  for  Larry  Kin 


Washington,  and  they  had  talked  for  15 
-  nutcs.  "She's  very  smart,  dresses  well," 
d  Sally.  "She  had  on  a  black  Chanel  suit 
th  the  white  gardenia  on  the  shoulder, 
i:d  she's  very  funny." 
I  was  quite  taken  with  Monica  Lewinsky 
video  when  sections  of  her  deposition 
:re  played  in  the  Senate  one  Saturday 
Drning.  Watching  a  hundred  senators 
itch  her  on  the  monitors  was  quite  a 
;ht.  There  had  been  times  in  the  preced- 
l  weeks  when  some  senators  had  been 
>enly  bored  with  the  proceedings,  but 
onica  brought  them  all  back  to  full  atten- 
>n.  She  was  different  from  what  I  had  ex- 
cted.  One  of  the  Republican  senators 
d  described  her  as  "heartbreakingly 
ung."  She  wasn't  heartbreakingly  young 
all.  She  was  poised,  smart,  funny,  and, 
emingly  at  least,  assured.  I  liked  her,  al- 
ough  I  hadn't  wanted  to  like  her,  and  I 
joyed  watching  her  outmaneuver  House 
anager  Ed  Bryant.  The  House  managers 
dn't  change  one  senator's  vote  for  im- 
lachment  with  Monica's  testimony.  She 
id  become  a  pro  at  testifying,  and  was 
ly  ahead  of  them.  I  wrote  her  a  letter.  I 
id  that  she  had  emerged  as  the  class  act 
'  the  trial,  though  no  one  would  have 
ought  that  a  year  ago.  I  asked  her  if  she 
auld  talk  with  me  after  her  interview  with 
irbara  and  her  interview  for  Britain's 
hannel  4,  for  which  she  was  getting  paid 
reported  $650,000.  I  heard  back  from 
ihn  Scanlon,  who  was  handling  her  pub- 
:  relations,  and  whom  I  happen  to  know, 
at  it  was  not  impossible.  He  even  set  a 
ntative  lunch  date  for  two  days  after 
:winsky's  interview  with  Barbara  Walters. 

watched  that  interview  in  Barbara  Wal- 
ters's  apartment  in  New  York,  along 
ith  a  small  group  of  people  who  had 
arked  on  the  program  and  some  close 
ends  of  Barbara's,  including  David  Frost, 
lother  of  the  great  interviewers.  Outside 
l  Fifth  Avenue,  there  was  no  traffic.  Sev- 
ity  million  people  were  home  watching 
xmica  and  Barbara.  I  was  mesmerized 
'  the  interview.  I  kept  thinking,  This  is 
merican  history  we're  watching.  Actresses 
ill  play  this  scene  in  movies  and  plays 
id  mini-series  in  the  new  century  ahead 
'  us.  Barbara  moved  about,  sitting  on  the 
m  of  one  person's  chair,  then  moving  on 
another,  never  taking  her  eyes  off  the 
reen.  During  the  commercials,  everyone 


talked  about  Monica.  Her  hair.  Her  lip- 
stick. Her  laughter.  Her  tears.  "I  don't 
think  the  president  is  coming  off  too 
well,"  I  whispered  to  my  friend  Casey 
Ribicoff,  widow  of  the  late  senator  Abra- 
ham Ribicoff,  and  then  the  commercial 
was  over.  Midway  or  so  in  the  interview, 
the  local  ABC  feed  began  flashing  a  storm 
warning  across  the  bottom  of  the  screen 
below  their  faces,  which  was  very  distract- 
ing. David  Westin,  the  president  of  ABC 
News,  was  present.  He  made  a  call  to  the 
station,  and  the  distraction  stopped.  It's 
called  Hanging  Out  with  the  Brass. 

At  times  Monica  reminded  me  of  the  ob- 
sessed women  in  Frangois  Truffaut's  Tlw 
Story  of  Adele  H.  and  Stephen  Sondheim's 
Passion.  I  can't  remember  exactly  when  it 
happened— and  I  think  maybe  it  wouldn't 
have  happened  if  the  show  hadn't  lasted 
two  hours  but  after  about  an  hour  and  a 
half  I  began  to  lose  patience  with  her.  Per- 
haps it  was  her  saying,  "I  don't  think  that 
my  relationship  hurt  the  job  he  was  doing. 
It  didn't  hurt  the  job  I  was  doing"— as  if 
you  could  equate  their  careers.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  newly  revealed  abortion,  resulting 
from  her  affair  with  the  other  guy,  Thomas 
Longstreth,  whom  she  had  taken  up  with 
after  her  affair  with  the  president  ended  and 
before  it  started  up  again.  The  next  day  I 
bought  Andrew  Morton's  book  Monica's 
Story  and  read  straight  through  it.  Having 
lived  in  Beverly  Hills  for  many  years,  I  have 
known  my  share  of  Monica  Lewinskys,  and 
she  was  true  to  form.  I  found  her  exasperat- 
ing, self-indulgent,  spoiled,  unrealistic,  and 
nice.  I  felt  sorry  for  her  that  she  was  the 
only  girl  in  her  class  who  didn't  get  invited 
to  Tori  Spelling's  birthday  party  when  they 
were  kids,  but  the  story  also  made  me  roar 
with  laughter,  so  Beverly  Hills  was  it.  The 
book  is  incredibly  revealing  about  the  presi- 
dent. The  affair  was  so  utterly  tacky,  and  his 
behavior  was  so  low-rent.  The  episode  in 
Room  1012  of  the  Ritz-Carlton  Hotel,  where 
Ken  Starr's  thugs  terrify  Monica  as  the 
hideous  Linda  Tripp  watches,  was  chilling, 
but  I  admired  Monica  for  not  caving  in. 

As  for  our  lunch  date,  it  was  canceled 
that  morning.  She  had  just  flown  in  from 
Los  Angeles  the  night  before,  and  she  was 
leaving  for  London  the  next  day,  and  she 
wasn't  feeling  well.  It  was  not  a  great  dis- 
appointment. By  that  time,  I  knew  every- 
thing I  needed  to  know  about  Monica 
Lewinsky. 


Yes,  the  president  was  acquitted,  as  he 
should  have  been.  There  was  none  of 
the  drama  the  O.  J.  Simpson  acquittal  had. 
There  was  no  surprise  element.  Everyone 
but  the  House  managers  knew  from  the 
beginning  that  it  was  going  to  end  up  as  it 
did.  Senator  Dianne  Feinstein's  censure 
proposal  was  dismissed,  and  consequently 
a  lot  of  people  felt  that  the  president  got 
off  easy,  considering  what  he  had  put  the 
country  through.  I  don't  think  he  got  off 
easy.  The  president's  close  friend  former 
senator  Dale  Bumpers  laid  it  out  pretty 
well  when  he  said  on  the  floor  of  the  Sen- 
ate that  the  Clintons  had  been  "about  as 
decimated  as  a  family  can  get.  The  rela- 
tionship between  husband  and  wife,  father 
and  child,  has  been  incredibly  strained,  if 
not  destroyed."  I  often  wonder  what  it 
must  feel  like  to  have  one  of  your  lies — 
which  the  whole  country  knows  is  a  lie- 
played  over  and  over  and  over  again  on 
television,  as  it  will  be  played  for  the  rest 
of  Bill  Clinton's  life:  "I  did  not  have  sexual 
relations  with  that  woman,  Miss  Lewin- 
sky," he  says  each  time,  with  a  forceful 
hand  gesture  to  emphasize  his  conviction 
in  the  lie.  Any  father  who  has  ever  let 
down  one  of  his  children  knows  what  a  ter- 
rible feeling  that  is,  and  the  president  has 
let  his  daughter  down  in  the  most  painful 
and  public  way.  How  he  must  suffer  for 
that.  How  shaming  it  must  be  for  him  to 
have  raised  Monica  Lewinsky  to  a  histori- 
cal status  nearly  equal  to  the  historical  sta- 
tus of  his  distinguished  wife.  No  matter 
what  good  he  may  do  in  recompense  in 
the  months  of  his  presidency  left  to  him, 
the  names  Monica  Lewinsky,  Paula  Jones, 
Gennifer  Flowers,  Kathleen  Willey,  and 
Juanita  Broaddrick  will  always  be  hurled 
in  his  face  by  someone  in  the  crowd,  as 
Sam  Donaldson  demonstrated  at  the  presi- 
dent's first  press  conference  in  nearly  a 
year,  when  he  was  talking  about  Kosovo 
and  Donaldson  asked  him  about  Juanita 
Broaddrick  and  used  the  word  "rape." 
Those  are  moments  that  must  hurt,  espe- 
cially with  everyone  staring  at  him.  "Well, 
he  brought  it  on  himself,"  people  say  to 
me,  which  is  true.  But  I  have  to  admit 
something:  I  want  to  see  the  guy  get  up 
again.  I  want  him  to  do  something  wonder- 
ful in  the  months  ahead,  before  he  walks 
across  the  White  House  lawn  for  the  last 
time  and  waves  good-bye  as  he  gets  into 
the  helicopter.  □ 


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AY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


I   l.'IIK'lillllllll 


Michael  Lutin  tells  Tauruses  it's  time  to  get  tough 


TAURUS     C^   APRIL   20-MAY20 

Yes,  you're  more  withholding  these  days,  but  what  of  it?  If  anybody  asks 
why,  you  can  tell  them  it's  a  matter  of  your  own  survival,  and  if  they 

don't  like  it,  tough.  When  people  who  are  supposed  to  be  your  elosesl 
allies  continue  lo  annoy  yon  by  being  passive-aggressive  and  beating 
around  the  bush,  how  can  you  ever  uncover  what  it  is  they  hope  to  get 
out  of  you'.'  Maybe,  during  tins  Mars-Saturn  opposition,  the  smart  thing 
would  be  to  concern  yourself  not  with  what  others  want  from  you  but 
rather  with  how  much  they  are  willing  to  give  to  get  it. 


71> 


SCORPIO  |»r'OCT.  24  NOV.  21 
You  really  should  not  start  invading  somebody's  private  space  just  be- 
cause you've  suddenly  decided  that  he  or  she  has  something  you  ab- 
solutely need  right  this  minute.  While  Mars  is  in  retrograde  motion  it's 
simply  not  a  good  idea  to  be  overly  grabby  or  pushy.  You've  got  lo  learn 
to  play  the  game,  lake  it  easy,  be  sly,  vague,  and  indirect.  The  trick  is  to 
figure  out  how  to  get  exactly  what  you  want  while  at  the  same  time  letting 
other  people  think  that  it  was  their  idea.  But  that  is  the  God-given  talent 
of  every  living  Scorpio,  isn't  it'.' 


GEMINI    S\   MAY   21-  JUNE    21 

For  all  your  internal  struggles  and,  God  knows,  you  have  plenty  of  them 
right  now  you  still  possess  an  inimitable  capacity  to  laugh  through  your 
tears  and  kid  about  even  the  most  serious  subjects.  Although  some  peo- 
ple might  find  your  detachment  utterly  chilling,  they  would  have  a  much 
fuller  sense  of  you  if  they  understood  that,  while  the  Mars-Saturn  opposi- 
tion is  cutting  you  deeply,  the  sextile  of  Jupiter  and  Uranus  is  working  as 
a  healthy  anesthetic.  The  result  is  that  you  do  all  your  hand-wringing  and 
teeth-gnashing  in  private.  In  public,  it's  Pagliacci  City. 


CANCER 


JUNE   22-  JULY   22 


Are  you  feeling  anxious  about  your  financial  or  emotional  future?  No  big 
deal.  Do  your  oppressors  fail  to  realize  how  hard  it  is  for  you  to  cater 
selflessly  to  the  people  in  charge  without  any  thought  for  your  own  well- 
being  and  security?  Not  to  worry.  Cool  and  unusual  opportunities  have 
replaced  the  cruel  and  unusual  punishment  you've  had  to  endure  from  a 
cold,  unsympathetic  world.  Now  things  have  picked  up,  but  if  you're  not 
really  flying  before  long,  call  your  mother  and  verify  your  birth  date.  Be- 
cause you're  probably  not  even  a  Cancer. 


LEO 


Si 


JULY    23-AUG.    22 


Just  because  you're  getting  hit  from  all  sides  doesn't  mean  you  have  to  go 
on  the  defensive  and  act  crazy.  When  the  populace  is  pressing  on  you 
from  the  north,  south,  east,  and  west,  try  not  to  think  of  those  awful 
scenes  from  Night  of  the  Living  Dead.  Think  instead  about  what  turns 
coal  into  diamonds.  Although  you  might  well  perceive  the  current  scene 
as  a  political  conspiracy,  it's  actually  just  a  T-square  of  Mars,  Saturn, 
Uranus,  and  Neptune.  Besides,  with  Jupiter  in  your  9th  house  this  year, 
you  can  laugh  it  all  off.  even  if  people  call  you  callous.  And  they  will. 


VIRGO 


w 


AUG.     23-SEPT.     22 


Astrologers  speak  of  the  finger  of  God,  and  this  month  you're  the  focus 
of  one,  formed  by  Jupiter  and  Uranus.  Creatively,  you're  hot,  and  with 
Mercury  going  direct  you  should  be  fretting  a  lot  less  about  minor  irrita- 
tions. However,  a  certain  degree  of  mental  stress  is  emanating  from  your 
3rd  and  9th  houses.  It  could  be  related  to  travel  or  publishing,  and  it  will 
certainly  involve  money.  Everything  does  these  days.  You  must  retreat  for 
spiritual  reasons,  whatever  the  cost.  Though  it  may  bug  you  to  hear  this, 
you  have  a  soul  that  needs  to  be  nurtured. 


SAGITTARIUS    ^^*      nov.  22-DEC.21 

The  split  you're  experiencing  in  your  psyche  right  now  is  easy  to  define. 
The  sextile  of  Jupiter  and  Uranus  has  you  bubbling  and  cheerful,  simply 
brimming  with  newfangled  ways  to  express  yourself.  Meanwhile,  retro- 
grade Mars  in  opposition  to  Saturn  is  affecting  another  region  of  your 
brain  and  has  you  dragging  your  butt  across  the  floor  like  an  old  dog 
with  hip  dysplasia.  In  addition  to  causing  you  physical  aches  and  emo- 
tional pains,  this  convinces  you  that  other  people  think  you're  all  washed" 
up.  Isn't  it  odd  to  feel  so  young  and  so  old  at  the  same  time? 


>5 


CAPRICORN  \^  DEC.22-JAN 
It  can  be  very  draining,  having  to  put  up  with  the  problems  of  children 
and  friends,  or  to  schmooze  with  the  "right"  people,  when  all  you  really 
want  is  to  go  find  enlightenment  in  Tibet  or  climb  into  bed  with  a  really 
good  book.  Escape  would  be  nice,  but  when  Saturn  is  involved  in  a  5th- 
and-llth-house  opposition,  whatever  enlightenment  you  may  enjoy  will 
probably  include  kids  and  friends— provided  you  have  any.  The  good 
news  is,  there's  a  possible  windfall  in  your  future.  And  no  matter  what 
else  is  happening,  that  should  be  enough  to  cheer  up  any  Capricorn. 

AQUARIUS      mk^      JAN.    20-  FEB.    18 

Although  you  can't  resist  torturing  yourself  and  putting  yourself  down 
every  other  minute  because  you  think  you're  a  total  fraud,  the  truth  is 
that  you're  still  very  much  a  key  player  these  days.  With  two  outer  planets 
in  Aquarius  playing  an  integral  part  in  this  month's  fixed  T-square,  it's  not 
just  that  your  input  is  still  needed;  in  some  ways  you're  actually  the  one 
who  has  the  final  say.  That  is  really  a  riot,  considering  that  you  are  tee- 
tering on  the  edge  of  extinction  and  feeling  utterly  vulnerable.  But  nobody 
else  has  to  know  that  you're  hanging  by  a  thread. 


PISCES 


X 


FEB.    19-MARCH    20 


Instead  of  allowing  your  mind  to  pull  you  in  a  hundred  different  direc- 
tions, you  would  be  much  wiser  just  to  settle  down  and  do  your  job. 
While  that  is  the  last  thing  most  Pisceans  want  to  hear,  work  is  probably 
the  only  way  at  this  time  to  release  your  tensions  and  express  your  cre- 
ative impulses.  Money  would  also  help,  naturally.  Since  Mars,  Saturn, 
Neptune,  and  Uranus  all  send  their  force  zinging  through  your  3rd,  9th, 
and  12th  houses,  you're  likely  to  experience  some  nerve-sizzling  energy, 
and  it  won't  be  the  kind  associated  with  recreational  drugs.  Let's  hope. 


LIBRA     ^"»      SEPT.     23-OCT.    23 

As  Jupiter  moves  through  your  solar  7th  house,  all  your  relationships 
should  be  improving,  no  matter  how  sour  you've  become  in  regard  to 
others.  Try  not  to  let  anything  spoil  the  flow  of  positive  emotions  now  that 
Jupiter  and  Uranus  are  closely  aligned.  There  are  bound  to  be  sexual 
hitches  and  financial  glitches  to  contend  with,  because  when  people  are 
trying  to  put  their  lives  together,  everything  has  to  be  negotiated.  But 
please  note  that  negotiating  does  not  mean  seething  with  rage  on  the  in- 
side while  you're  forcing  a  smile  that  could  fell  a  charging  rhino. 


ARIES 


MARCH    21-APRIL    19 


You  ought  to  be  sailing  along  like  a  Thunderbird  on  the  freeway,  posi- 
tively drooling  with  contentment,  now  that  the  transit  of  Jupiter  is  bring- 
ing in  some  decent  luck  at  last.  Fresh  opportunities  abound,  and,  with 
the  burden  of  Saturn  lifted  from  your  shoulders  and  the  specter  of  ruin 
gone,  you  should  be  basking  in  your  new  sense  of  freedom.  You're  prob- 
ably still  bitching  about  something,  though,  because  if  you  don't  have 
flak  coming  at  you  from  some  direction,  or  anything  to  scream  about  or 
fight  for,  you're  miserable.  Now  it's  money. 


To  hear  Michael  Lutin  read  your  weekly  horoscope,  call  1-900-28V-FAIR  on  a  Touch-Tone  phone. 
Cost:  $1.95  per  minute.  If  you  are  under  18,  you  need  parental  permission. 


VANITY     FAIR 


h  r  m  i  lto  n 

America's    Timekeeper    since     1892 


ItousI  Uueslionnane 


Leo 

Castelli 


With  a  remarkable  stable  of  art 

icons — Lichtenstein,  Johns, 

Rauschenberg,  Ruscha,  Serra,  and 

Judd — legendary  dealer  Leo  Castelli 

has  presided  over  the  contemporary  art 

world  from  his  Manhattan  gallery 

for  more  than  40  years.  This  month, 

as  he  opens  a  new  gallery  in 

New  York,  Castelli  demonstrates  here 

that,  at  91,  his  passion  for  a  life 

in  art  is  undiminished 


What  do  you  consider  your  greatest  achievement? 

lo  siill  be  alive. 

What  or  who  is  the  greatest  love  of  your  life? 

Art  and/or  artists. 

What  is  your  idea  of  perfect  happiness? 

Having  achieved  something  important. 

What  are  your  favorite  names? 

Barbara,  Jasper,  Roy,  Bruce. 

What  is  your  greatest  fear? 

Lack  of  order. 

What  is  the  trait  you  most  deplore  in  others? 

Lack  of  generosity. 

What  is  your  favorite  journey? 

Moon. 

What  do  you  consider  the  most  overrated  virtue? 

Chastity. 

On  what  occasion  do  you  lie? 

When  it  seems  useful. 

Which  words  or  phrases  do  you  most  overuse? 

"Let's  wait." 

What  is  your  greatest  regret? 

Not  having  worked  harder. 

When  and  where  were  you  happiest? 

Now,  in  New  York  City. 

Which  talent  would  you  most  like  to  have? 

Good  writing. 

If  you  could  change  one  thing  about  yourself,  what  would  it  be? 

My  size. 

What  is  your  most  treasured  possession? 

My  cat. 

What  do  you  regard  as  the  lowest  depth  of  misery? 

To  lose  interest  in  life. 

What  is  your  favorite  occupation? 

Sleeping. 

What  is  your  most  marked  characteristic? 

Friendliness. 

Who  is  your  favorite  hero  of  fiction? 

James  Bond. 

Who  are  your  heroes  in  real  life? 

Tennis  champions. 

How  would  you  like  to  die? 

Painlessly. 

If  you  were  to  die  and  come  back  as  a  person  or  thing,  what  do 
you  think  it  would  be? 

A  painting. 

If  you  could  choose  what  to  come  back  as,  what  would  it  be? 

An  improved  version  of  myself. 

What  is  your  motto? 

"Let  things  take  care  of  themselves." 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH    by    RICHARD     BURBRIDGE 


MAY     199 


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CANOODLING  WITH  JULIA   I  164 

From  her  tumultuous  romances  to  her  bra  size,  every  detail 
of  Julia  Roberts's  life  has  been  picked  over  by  the  tabloids  for  nearly 
a  decade.  As  she  stars  in  the  romantic  comedy  Notting  Hill— 
playing  an  equally  besieged  actress— Roberts  gives  Ned  Zeman 
a  lesson  in  surreal  celebrity.  Photographs  by  Mario  Testino. 

LOSING  HER  KING  I  172 

Following  the  death  of  King  Hussein,  Leslie  Bennetts  enters  the 
guarded  world  of  Jordan's  Queen  Noor,  the  American-born  beauty 
who  has  been  carrying  a  nation's  grief  even  as  she  copes  with 
the  greatest  personal  loss  of  her  life.  Photographs  by  Herb  Ritts. 

THE  DEAD  PARROT  SOCIETY  I  178 

In  1969  six  young  men  turned  comedy  into  Something 
Completely  Different.  Thirty  years  later,  in  David  Morgan's  oral 
history,  the  surviving  members  of  Monty  Python  recall  the  best 
sketches,  the  worst  fights,  and  the  importance  of  being  silly. 

BOOGIE  KNIGHT  |  182 

Herb  Ritts  and  Peter  Devine  spotlight  Latin-pop  star  Ricky  Martin, 
who,  with  a  Grammy  triumph  and  a  first  English-language 
album  out  this  month,  has  had  a  sensational  U.S.  landing. 

ARTIE  SHAW'S  SOLO  BEAT  |  184 

At  the  height  of  his  career,  bandleader  Artie  Shaw  put  down  his 
clarinet,  amid  his  disdain  for  his  audiences  and  the  Hollywood 
beauties  who  loved  him.  On  the  eve  of  a  Shaw  revival.  Cliff  Rothman 
profiles  the  onetime  king  of  swing.  Portrait  by  Bruce  Weber. 

DUEL  IDENTITY  |  190 

Julian  Broad  and  Evgenia  Peretz  spotlight  Ralph  Fiennes, 

who  hides  the  truth— in  three  different  roles— in  Taste  of  Sunshine, 

Istvan  Szabo's  family  saga  of  Hungarian  Jews. 

PALM  SPRINGS  WEEKENDS  I  192 

Long  a  desert  playground  for  Hollywood  royalty  and 
Republican  ex-presidents,  Palm  Springs  has  been  derided  as 
"God's  waiting  room"  even  by  its  own  mayor.  But  with  everyone 
from  Donatella  Versace  to  Tom  Ford  flocking  to  its  surreal 
landscape  and  modernist  architecture,  Bob  Colacello  finds,  the 
resort  is  so  cool  it's  hot.  Photographs  by  Jonathan  Becker. 


Col 


umns 


OLD  ENOUGH  TO  DIE  I  76 

In  America,  minors  are  protected  from  tobacco  and  alcohol, 
but  not  from  a  lethal  injection  or  the  electric  chair.  Christopher 
Hitchens  wonders  what  kind  of  village  it  takes  to  kill  a  child. 

C'ONTINUH)    ON    PAQ1      1? 


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Brava  Elsa: 

What  a  worilfrful  adventure  its  been,  watching  you  shape 
world  of  design  for  25  years.  Happy  Anniversary. 
-Tiffany  &  Co. 


m  -bc ."; 


m 


1 


Y  FA  It 


(   ()  N  I  I  N  IJ  I   I)    I   HUM    I'ACi  E    2  4 


JUNE      1999 


WILD  ON  THESTREET.COM   |  86 

James  Cramer  became  a  Wall  Street  guru  by  writing  for  a  media 
network  of  powerful  Harvard  grads.  But,  Suzanna  Andrews  reports, 
as  Cramer  takes  public  his  financial  Web  site  while  feuding  nastily 
with  partner  Marty  Peretz,  that  visibility  is  a  double-edged  sword. 

HOTEL  CALIFORNIA  |  102 

Matt  Tyrnauer  checks  into  the  Standard— Andre  Balazs's  new  West 
Hollywood  mecca  for  thrifty,  style-conscious  Gen-Xers— and 
deems  the  hotel  anything  but  ordinary.  Photographs  by  Todd  Eberle. 

OSCAR  INVASION   I  112 

From  Madonna  to  Gwyneth  to  Monica,  they  all  swanned 
and  shimmied  to  the  sound  of  Havana's  hottest  band  at  V.F.'s 
sixth  annual  Oscar  bash.  A  photomontage  from  Mortons. 

HALL  OF  FAME  I  124 

Lisa  Robinson  nominates  Eric  Clapton  for  another  brilliant 

use  of  his  guitars— an  auction  to  benefit  his  substance-abuse  clinic. 

Portrait  by  Norman  Watson. 

THE  DICTATOR  AND  THE  DEAD   I  126 

After  General  Augusto  Pinochet  was  arrested  in  London  last 
October,  he  became  the  first  former  head  of  state  to  be  charged 
with  genocide,  torture,  and  terrorism.  As  Chile's  notorious 
ex-dictator  awaits  extradition  to  stand  trial,  Judy  Bachrach  charts 
his  blood-soaked  path  to  an  unprecedented  day  of  reckoning. 

MRS.  ASTOR  REGRETS  I  142 

Brooke  Astor  critiques  a  rude  new  world  of  men  without  hats 
and  meandering  pedestrians.  Illustrations  by  Hilary  Knight. 


Unities 


MURPHY'S  LAW  |  151 

Miami  heat— speed-dialing  the  night  away  with  Ingrid  Casares; 
Golden  Boys— Hollywood  Brat  Packs  through  the  decades. 


Et  Cetera 


LEAVING  LOS  ANGELES 


EDITOR'S  LETTER:  Gods  and  monsters  |  40 

CONTRIBUTORS  I  44 

LETTERS:  HighonSunset  |  52 

CREDITS  I  229 

PLANETARIUM:  Lose  your  marbles,  Gemini  I  230 

PROUST  QUESTIONNAIRE:  Jackie  Collins  |  232 

TO  HIND  CONDh  NAST  MAGAZ1NLS  ON  THfc  WORLD  WIDE  WEB,  VISIT  WWW.epicuri0US.C0DI 

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(916)927-2300 


VANITY  FAIII 


Editor  GRAYDON  CARTER 


Managing  Editor  CHRIS GARR1  I  I 

Design  Director  david  HARRIS 

Executive  Literary  Editor  wayni  lawson 

Features  Editor  janlsakkin 

Senior  Articles  Editors  DOUGLAS  stumpi-;  aimee  BELL,  bruce  handy 

Editor-at-Large  matt  tyrnauer 

Legal  Affairs  Editor  ROBERT  walsh    Senior  Editor  ned  zeman 

Fashion  Director  Elizabeth  saltzman    Photography  Director  susan  white 

Director  of  Special  Projects  sara  marks 

Assistant  Managing  Editor  ellen  kiell 

Art  Director  Gregory  mastrianni 

London  Editor  henry  porter    West  Coast  Editor  krista  smith 

Special  Correspondents  dominick  dunne,  bob  colacello. 

MAUREEN  ORTH.  BRYAN  BURROUGH.  AMY  FINE  COLLINS 

Writer-at-Large  marie  brenner 

Special  Projects  Editor  reinaldo  herrera 

Copy  Editor  peter  devine    Research  Director  Patricia  j  singer    Photo  Editor  lisa  berman 

Photo  Research  Editor  jeannie  Rhodes    Vanities  Editor  riza  cruz 

Associate  Copy  Editor  Allison  a  merrill 

Research  Associates  olivia  j.  abel,  aliyah  baruchin,  Alexander  cohen, 

DAVID  KATZ.  DAMIEN  McCAFFERY  GABRIEL  SANDERS 

Associate  Art  Directors  mimi  dutta,  julie  weiss    Designer  lisa  Kennedy 

Production  Managers  dina  amarjto-deshan.  martha  hurley 

Assistant  to  the  Editor  punch  hutton 

Editorial  Business  Manager  mersini  fialo 

Fashion  Editor  tina  skouras    Senior  Fashion  Market  Editor  mary  f  braeunig 

U.K.  Associate  dana  brown    Paris  Editor  veronique  plazolles 

Art  Production  Manager  Christopher  george 

Copy  Production  Associate  Anderson  tepper    Associate  Style  Editor  kathryn  macleod 

Associate  Fashion  Editor  Patricia  herrera 

Editorial  Promotions  Associates  darryl  brantley.  tim  Mchenry 

Editorial  Associates  Hilary  frank,  john  gillies,  kimberly  kessler    Features  Assistant  shane  mccoy 

Editorial  Assistants  ian  bascetta.  kate  ewald,  michael  hogan. 

LAURA  KANG.  TARAH  KENNEDY.  SIOBHAN  McDEVITT     PhotO  Assistant  SARAH  CZELADNICKI 

Contributing  Projects  Associates  gaby  grekin,  Patrick  sheehan 

Contributing  Projects  Assistants  heather  fink,  marc  goodman.  Katharine  marx.  joaquin  Torres 

Contributing  Fashion  Assistants  nicole  Lepage,  bozhena  orekhova,  mary  louise  platt 


Editor,  Creative  Development  david  friend 


Contributing  Editors 

ROBERT  SAM  ANSON,  IUDY  BACHRACH,  ANN  LOUISE  BARDACH.  LESLIE  BENNETTS. 

CARL  BERNSTEIN,  PETER  BISKIND.  BUZZ  BISSINGER.  HOWARD  BLUM,  PATRICIA  BOSWORTH.  ANDREW  COCKBURN, 

LESLIE  COCKBURN,  IENNETCONANT,  BEATRICE  MONTI  DELLA  CORTE,  ALAN  DEUTSCHMAN. 

RUPERT  EVERETT,  JULES  FEIFFER,  BRUCE  FEIRSTEIN.  DAVID  HALBERSTAM.  EDWARD  W  HAYES.  CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS, 

A.  M  HOMES,  LAURA  JACOBS.  DAVID  KAMP.  EDWARD  KLEIN,  FRAN  LEBOWITZ,  MICHAEL  LUTIN,  DAVID  MARGOLICK, 

KIM  MASTERS,  BRUCE  McCALL,  ANNE  McNALLY,  RICHARD  MERKIN,  FREDERIC  MORTON.  DEE  DEE  MYERS.  ANDREW  NEIL, 

BETSEY  OSBORNE.  ELISE  OSHAUGHNESSY  EVGENIA  PERETZ,  WILLIAM  PROCHNAU,  JOHN  RICHARDSON. 

LISA  ROBINSON,  ELISSA  SCHAPPELL,  KEVIN  SESSUMS,  GAIL  SHEEHY,  MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON,  ALEX  SHOUMATOFF. 

INGRID  SISCHY.  SALLY  BEDELL  SMITH,  NICK  TOSCHES,  DIANE  VON  FURSTENBERG,  HEATHER  WATTS, 

GEORGE  WAYNE,  MARJORIE  WILLIAMS,  JAMES  WOLCOTT 


Contributing  Photographers 

ANNIE  LEIBOVITZ 

IONATHAN  BECKER.  HARRY  BENSON.  MICHEL  COMTE.  DAFYDD  JONES, 

HELMUT  NEWTON,  HERB  RITTS,  DAVID  SE1DNER,  SNOWDON,  BRUCE  WEBER,  FIROOZ  ZAHEDI 

Contributing  Artists  tim  sheaefer,  Robert  risko,  Hilary  knight 

Contributing  Editor  (Los  Angeles)  wendy  stark  morrissey 

Contributing  Photography  Editor  sunhee  c  grinnell 

Contributing  Stylists  kim  meehan,  nicoletta  santoro 


Director  of  Public  Relations  beth  kseniak 

Deputy  Directors  of  Public  Relations  anina  c  mahoney.  sharon  schieffer 

Deputy  Director  of  Public  Relations-Europe  anna  byng 


Editorial  Director  JAMES  TRUMAN 


INTRODUCING    THE    JAGUAR    S-TYPE 


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JAGUAR 


THE    BLENDING   o/ART  and  MACHINE 


For  more  information:  1-800-4-JAGUAR  or  www.jaguar.com/us 


Apparently,  the  AIDS  virus    ■ 
is  so  smart  it  can  convince  people 
that  it's  no  longer  a  threat. 


Fewer  Americans  are  dying  of 
AIDS.  Those  who  were  once 
near  death  are  full  of  life.  A 
virus  that  once  filled  all  of  us 
with  dread  now  seems,  dare  one 
say  it,  manageable. 

But  one  thing  the  AIDS  virus 
has  never  been  is  stupid.  It  can 
resist  medications  by  mutating 
into  new  forms.  And  it  strikes 
those  who  are  least  able  to 
defend  themselves. 

Working  to  defeat  HIV/AIDS, 
finally  and  unequivocably,  will 
require  an  extraordinary  com- 
mitment from  the  private  and 
public  sectors.  Since  current 
drug  therapies  become  less 
effective  the  longer  patients  rely 
on  them,  new  treatments  must 
be  developed.  And  achieving 
the  ultimate  goal,  an  HIV  vac- 
cine, requires  nothing  less  than 
breakthrough  research. 

The  American  Foundation 
for  AIDS  Research  has  spear- 
headed the  fight  against  AIDS. 
We  funded  research  in  the  late 


1980s  that  led  to  the  develop- 
ment of  protease  inhibitors, 
now  one  of  the  most  effective 
weapons  against  HIV.  We  sup- 
ported important  vaccine 
work.  We  sponsored  studies 
that  led  to  the  use  of  AZT  to 
prevent  HIV  transmission  from 
pregnant  women  to  their 
unborn  children.  We've  helped 
make  experimental  therapies 
more  accessible.  And  we  are  an 
advocate  for  rational  and 
compassionate  AIDS-related 
public  policies  for  protection  of 
the  rights  of  people  with 
HIV/AIDS. 

Impressive?  Sure.  But  not 
nearly  enough.  Long-term  solu- 
tions must  remain  the 
goal.  To  find  out  how  you 
can  help,  call  the  American 
Foundation  for  AIDS  Research 
at  l-800-39amfAR,  or  go  to 
www.amfar.org. 

We've  bought  time.  More 
research  will  buy  answers. 


-  -0*.'  ■•- 


Uk 


Jacobsons 

Michigan    Ohio    Indiana    Kentucky    Kansas    Florida 
1-800-635-4770 


HlOOPS. 

For  a  Honora  brochure  call  toll-free 

1-888-2-HONORA. 

http://www.honora.com 

Jewelry  enlarged  to  show  detail  ©1998  Honora  Designs  Copyrighted 


VANITY  FAIII 


MITCHELL  B.  FOX 

Publisher  and  Vice  President 

Associate  Publisher  NAN(  v  i  andsman  hi  ROI  R 
Advertising  Director  in  I  D  51  EUG 
Marketing  Director  mk  hit  i  i  i  don 

Executive  Director.  Jewelry  and  Watch  I  INDA  s  ki  ONI  k 

Executive  Director,  International  Fashion  and  Retail  iova  BONEM 

Fashion  Director  nori  en  DEI  ANEY 

Beauty  Director  MICH!  LLE  k  i  rjedman 

Sales  Development  Manager  karen  LANDRUD 

Beauty  Manager  wkndi  v.  sandi  ks 

Entertainment  and  Spirits  Manager  jay  SPAl  i  i  \ 

Account  Manager  giraldine  BEATTY 

Marketing  Managers  suzanni-.  FROMM,  daniella  r.  wells 

Business  Manager  regina  a.  wall 

Executive  Assistant  to  the  Publisher  randy  j  cunio 

Advertising  Coordinator  tracey  k  matson 


West  Coast  Manager 

RITA  MORAN  CHAVERS 

Southwest  Manager 

DONNA  CAMPBELL  IRONSIDE 

6300  Wilshire  Boulevard 

Los  Angeles.  California  90048 


Midwest  Manager 

KELLY  SOUTER 

875  North  Michigan  Avenue 

Chicago.  Illinois  60611 


San  Francisco  Manager 

RUTH  TOOK.ER 

50  Francisco  Street 

San  Francisco.  California  94133 


Detroit  Manager 

KELLIE  A.  MacALOON 

3250  West  Big  Beaver  Road 

Suite  233 

Troy.  Michigan  48084 


Southeast  and  Florida 

BARBARA  BING 

3384  Peachtree  Road.  Suite  825 

Atlanta.  Georgia  30326 


Hong  Kong  Milan 

RONAN  GARDINER  M1RELLA  DONINI 

MATHEWS  &  ASSOCIATES  PTY.  LTD.  MIA  S.R.L. 

25th  Floor.  Causeway  Bay  Plaza  I  Via  Hoepli.  3 

489  Hennessy  Road.  Causeway  Bay.  Hong  Kong  20121  Milan.  Italy 


Paris 

SYLVIEC.  DURLACH 

S  &  R  MEDIA 

32  Rue  de  Meudon 

92100  Boulogne.  France 


Associate  Creative  Services  Director  Jennifer  orr  kelman 

Associate  Promotion  Director  meridith  parks  rotman 

Art  Director  colleen  meade 

Merchandising  Managers  Leslie  k.  brown, sheehan  becker 

Special  Projects  Manager  chrisechaurre 

Promotion  Coordinator  tania  leclere 

Promotion  Coordinator/Copywriter  marjorie  mindell 

Promotion  Production  Coordinator  kerri  fallon 

Promotion  Assistant  diana  rayzman 

Advertising  Assistants  kristen  weiss. 

KATIE  FELTON,  ALISON  HERNON.  MEREDITH  KURLAND,  ALEXIS  WEINSTEIN,  LISA  BARLOW  (DETROIT), 
GRETCHEN  DRL1MMOND  (CHICAGO).  DEANNA  LIEN1NG  (SAN  FRANCISCO).  CHRISTINE  MOLNAR  (LOS  ANGELES) 

Vanity  Fair  is  published  by  The  Conde  Nast  Publications  Inc., 

Conde  Nast  Building,  350  Madison  Avenue,  New  York.  New  York  10017 

Chairman  s.  I  newhouse  jr 

Deputy  Chairman-Editorial  Alexander  liberman 


President  and  CEO  STEVEN  T.  FLORIO 


Executive  Vice  Presidents  CHARLES  H.  townsend. 

CATHERINE  VISCARDI  JOHNSTON 

Executive  Vice  President- Chief  Financial  Officer  ERJC  C  ANDERSON 

Senior  Vice  President-Consumer  Marketing  PETER  A.  ARMOUR 

Senior  Vice  President-Manufacturing  and  Distribution  KEVIN  G.  HICKEY 

Senior  Vice  President-Market  Research  Stephen  blacker 

Senior  Vice  President-Human  Resources  JILL  HENDERSON  bright 

Senior  Vice  President-Corporate  Communications  maurie  perl 

Vice  President-Systems  and  Technology  OWEN  B.  weekley    Vice  President-Editorial  Business  Manager  LINDA  RICE 

Vice  President-Planning  and  Development  primalia  CHANG 

Vice  President-Marketing  and  Database  Stephen  m  i  v  i  >ffi 

Vice  President-Corporate  Creative  Director  GARY  VAN  DIS    Vice  President-Corporate  Sales  susan  hi  \nk 

Vice  President-Corporate  Sales  and  Marketing,  Detroit  PEGGY  daik  ii 

Vice  President-Creative  Marketing  c  ARA  deoul  PERL 

Vice  President-Advertising  Business  Manager  Roberta  silversione    Treasurer  DAVID  H  cm  Mini  in 

Director  of  Advertising  Production  PHILIP  V.  lentini 
President-Asia-Pacific  didifr  gufrin 


38  VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


BOSS 

HUGO       BOSS 


Available  at 

BOSS  Hugo  Boss  SHOPS 

Atlanta;  Bal  Harbour;  Beverly  Hills; 
Century  City;  Costa  Mesa;  Dallas; 
King  of  Prussia;  Las  Vegas; 
Mc  Lean;  Scottsdale;  Short  Hills; 
Troy;  Washington,  DC 
Bloomingdale's,  New  York; 
Burdine's,  Dadeland;  Cedncs, 
Edina;  Gary's,  Newport  Beach; 
Macy's,  New  York;  Macy's, 
San  Francisco;  Mario's,  Seattle; 
Saks  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 

Opening  Spring  1999 
Paramus;  Barney's,  New  York; 
Macy's,  Beverly  Center 

AND  ALL  LEADING 
OPTICAL  SHOPS 


J 


Ldllors  L(Ml(T 


Gods  and  Monsters 


hat  started  last  October  as  one  of 
*  ft  luial  Augusto  Pinochet's  fre- 
quent jaunts  to  London— the  for- 
mer Chilean  dictator  shopped  for 
a  new  Burberry,  visited  his  old 
chum  Margaret  Thatcher,  had  tea 
at  the  Savoy  -has  ended  in  a  con- 
troversy that  continues  to  rage 
around  the  world.  As  I  write,  the  83-year-old 
general  is  under  house  arrest,  in  the  Surrey  coun- 
tryside, awaiting  extradition  to  Spain,  where  he 
has  been  charged  with  genocide,  torture,  and 
terrorism.  This  exercise  in  justice  across  borders 
is  virtually  without  precedent  in  modern  history: 
a  former  head  of  state  facing  trial  in  another  country  for  crimes 
committed  while  he  was  in  office.  As  Judy  Bachrach  reports  in  her 
compelling  dispatch  on  page  126,  "The  Dictator  and  the  Dead," 
it  seems  clear  from  available  evidence  that  Pinochet  must  have  at 
the  very  least  known  about  the  thousands  of  bloody  crimes  that 
were  carried  out  in  his  name  in  the  1970s  by  his  feared  secret  po- 
lice. Perhaps  best  remembered  here  in  the  U.S.  is  the  1976  car 
bombing  that  killed  the  general's  political  opponent,  Orlando 
Letelier,  and  left  a  young  American,  Ronni  Moffitt,  dead.  But 
Pinochet's  arrest  by  the  British  and  impending  prosecution  by  a 
Spanish  court  raise  the  prospect  of  similar  scenarios.  Human- 
rights  violations  are  often  in  the  eyes  of  the  beholder.  Could 
George  Bush,  for  instance,  be  grabbed  in  another  country  and 
turned  over  to  a  third  for  the  murder  of  innocents  during  U.S. 
bombings  of  Iraq  in  1991?  Or  could  Bill  Clinton  be  held  account- 
able for  civilian  deaths  in  the  air  strikes  against  Serbia? 


Until  the  ramifications  of  Pinochet's  arres 
unfold,  former  heads  of  state  might  be  we 
advised  to  stick  close  to  home.  In  the  case  c 
American  ex-presidents  Republican  ones,  any 
way— the  obvious  choice  for  God's  waiting  roon 
is  Palm  Springs,  California,  the  Big  Room  o 
Hollywood's  biggest  stars  in  the  30s,  40s,  am 
50s.  Great  weather,  dry  air,  vault-of-heavei 
skies;  it  doesn't  get  much  better.  Dwight  Eisen 
hower  loved  its  emerald-green  golf  courses 
Gerald  and  Betty  Ford  are  back-nine  regular 
there  (not  least  because  Mrs.  Ford's  legendar 
rehabilitation  center  is  nearby  in  the  Coachell; 
Valley),  and  the  Bushes  have  been  frequent  visi 
tors  to  Sunnylands,  the  sleek,  historic  compound  of  Lee  and  Wal 
ter  Annenberg.  Palm  Springs,  that  time  capsule  of  mid-centun 
high  modernism,  is  buzzing  again,  drawing  a  new  generation  o 
hipsters  to  its  perfect  climate  and  dazzling  glass  boxes.  As  Bob  Co. 
lacello  writes  in  his  tour  d'horizon  on  page  192,  "What  Art  Decc 
did  for  Miami  Beach  in  the  1980s,  modernism  is  doing  for  Palrr 
Springs  today." 

In  a  desert  kingdom  many  time  zones  away,  the  recent  death  of 
reigning  head  of  state,  Jordan's  King  Hussein,  is  the  poignant  back 
drop  for  Leslie  Bennetts's  profile  of  his  beautiful,  American-borr 
wife,  Queen  Noor,  on  page  172.  Perhaps  grief  led  the  former  Lis 
Halaby  to  drop  her  public  mask  a  little  and  give  Bennetts  a  hint  o 
the  struggles  she  has  faced  over  two  decades  as  queen  of  an  Islami 
country  in  which  she  was  often  at  social  and  political  odds  with  hei 
native  land.  Her  courage  and  dignity  as  mourner  in  chief  for  hei 
adopted  nation  are  impressive  indeed.  — GRAYDON  CARTER 


Flower  Girl 


ON  THE  COVER 

Julia  Roberts  wears  a  shirt  by 
John  Galliano.  Pants  by  Lost  Art.  Earrings 
by  Fred  Leighton.  Hair  by  Orlando  Pita. 
Makeup  by  Tom  Pecheux.  Hair  products  and 
makeup  from  Neurrogena.  Set  design 
and  props  by  Jack  Flanagan.  Styled  by 
Lori  Goldstein.  Photographed  exclusively 
for  V.F.  by  Mario  Testino. 


40  VANITY     FAIR 


Julia  Roberts,  who  plays  an 

American  actress  hounded  by  paparazzi 

in  the  upcoming  Notting  Hill,  is 

photographed  here  in  a  more  sedate 

setting,  at  Tribeca  Studios  in 

New  York,  February  16,  1999.  Far  left. 

headpiece  by  Patricia  Underwood. 

Above,  shirt  and  pants  by  Viktor 

&  Rolf  Haute  Couture;  manicure 

by  Nails  by  Emma. 


JUNE     1999 


GIORGIO  ARMANI 


I 


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THE  ORIGINAL 
SPORTS  WATCH 

SINCE  1860. 

SWISS    MADE 


VANITY    FAIR    PROMOTION 


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Although  he  was  born  and  raised  in  Brooklyn,  special  correspondent 
Bob  Colacello  (shown  here  with  contributing  photographer  Jonathan  Becker) 
has  always  been  attracted  to  the  desert.  "When  I  was  a  kid,"  he  says, 
"I  wanted  to  be  Lawrence  of  Arabia."  The  research  Colacello  did  for  last 
year's  two-part  V.F.  story  about  the  Reagans  took  him  to  Palm  Springs, 
which  he  celebrates  in  this  issue.  The  area's  allure,  he  says,  lies  in  its 
"combination  of  movie  stars,  modernism,  and  presidential  politics— all 
the  things  that  interest  me." 


Mario  Testino's  cover  shoots  for 

V.F.  have  offered  unique  glimpses 

of  the  softer  sides  of  famous 

women,  from  Madonna  to 

Princess  Diana.  His  secret  is  simple: 

"When  I  photograph  women, 

I  try  to  find  what  I  like  most 

about  them.  I  try  to  draw  out 

what  makes  them  smile,  laugh, 

and  behave  like  themselves." 

The  same  principles  guided  him 

while  photographing  Julia 

Roberts  for  this  month's  cover. 

"I  wanted  to  bring  out  her  more 

natural  side  and  not  depend 

on  the  image  to  which  we  were 

already  accustomed."  Testino's 

book  of  fashion-show  photographs, 

Front  Row/Backstage,  will  be 

published  this  fall. 

CONTINUED    ON    P AG ]     -4  x 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


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I    UNIINI'I    II     I    1(11  M     I' A  (i  I      4  4 

Not  only  did  Jordan's  Queen  Noor 

get  "off  her  throne"  lot  Herb  Ritts,  who 

photographed  her  for  the  profile  that 

appears  OH  page  172;  she  lay  aeross  the 

floor.  More  surprises  were  in  store 

when  her  husband,  King  Hussein,  walked 

in  alter  a  meeting  with  President 

Clinton.  "He  just  introduced  himself 

not  in  a  royal  manner,  but  just  as  a 

guy,"  Ritts  says  of  the  king.  Then,  for 

what  would  be  the  last  formal  portraits 

taken  of  him  before  his  death,  the  king 

posed  with  his  wife.  Together,  says  Ritts 

(shown  here  at  V.F.'s  Oscar  party  with 

Mariah  Carey),  "they  were  very  loving 

and  caring— making  jokes  and  cracking 

up.  It  was  quite  a  little  afternoon." 


Cliff  Rothman  is  overwhelmed  by 
the  sheer  energy  of  legendary  musician 
Artie  Shaw,  whom  he  profiles  on  page 
184.  "To  be  in  his  presence,"  says 
Rothman,  "is  to  be  in  the  presence  of  a 
vital  force."  Rothman,  a  cultural  reporter 
for  Tlte  Nation  and  the  Los  Angeles  Times, 
became  a  lifelong  Shaw  fan  when  he 
was  15.  "I  was  at  camp  and  this  cool  kid 
in  my  bunk  started  playing  Artie  Shaw, 
and  I  remember  lying  in  the  dark 
and  hearing  'Moonglow'  and  just  being 
carried  away.  His  music  has  been 
with  me  ever  since." 


When  Monty  Python's  Flying  Circus 

first  aired  in  the  United  States,  in  1974, 

David  Morgan  was  instantly  hooked. 

"There  was  no  warming-up  period  for  me," 

he  says.  Last  year  he  spent  five  months 

interviewing  members  of  the  revolutionary 

British  comedy  troupe  for  his  oral  history 

Monty  Python  Speaks!,  which  will  be 

published  this  month  by  Avon  Books. 

"It's  the  book  I've  always  wanted  to  read," 

says  Morgan.  "I'm  just  glad  I  had 

the  opportunity  to  do  it."  An  excerpt 

begins  on  page  178. 


"I've  interviewed  a  lot  of  men  on  Wall 
Street,  but  interviewing  Jim  Cramer  was  one 
of  the  most  unusual  experiences  of  my  career," 
says  Slizanna  Andrews,  who  profiles  the  mercurial 
investor  and  columnist  in  this  issue.  Andrews, 
who  has  also  written  for  New  York,  The 
New  York  Times,  and  Rolling  Stone,  found 
Cramer  to  be  so  animated  that  she  describes 
the  interview  as  a  kind  of  performance  art. 
"He's  sort  of  a  character,"  she  says,  "like  a 
character  that  Balzac  could  have  written." 

CON  Tl  N  III   I)    ON    PAGE    50 


48  VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


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BOWFINGER 


Starring  Steve  Martin  and  Eddie 

Murphy.   BOWFINGER  opens  in 

theaters  everywhere  on  July  23. 

Visit  the  men's  fragrance  counter  at 

Macy's  in  the  following  stores, 

and  receive  complimentary  tickets 

with  any  purchase  from  the 

Chrome  Fragrance  Collection. 


CA:    Beverly  Center,  Los  Angeles 
Century  City,  Los  Angeles 
Stonestown,  San  Francisco 
Union  Square,  San  Francisco 
Brea  Mall,  Orange  County 
South  Coast  Plaza,  Orange  County 

FL       Aventura  Mall,  Miami 
The  Falls,  Miami 

GA:    Lenox  Square,  Atlanta 

Perimeter  Mall,  Perimeter 

MA:    Macy's  Boston,  Boston 

South  Shore  Plaza  Mall,  Braintree 
Natick  Mall,  Natick 

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Macy's  Springfield,  Springfield 

Offer  valid  June  II  to  June  21  (while  supplies  last). 

Screenings  will  be  conducted  July  1999. 

For  additional  information  on  BOWFINGER, 

log  on  to  www.bowfingercom. 


Lonlrihuloi? 


(    I J  N  I  I  N  I  i  I    I )    I  HUM     PAO I      ^l< 

Contributing  editor  Elissa  Schappell 

considers  the  creation  of  her  monthly 

"Hot  Iype"  column  an  enviable 

task.  "You  get  paid  to  read  books  and 

be  opinionated,"  she  says.  One  drawback: 

"My  apartment  is  a  disaster-  piles  of 

books  everywhere."  Her  Brooklyn  home 

may  get  messier  now  that  Schappell 

and  her  writer  husband,  Rob  Spillman, 

have  launched  a  literary  magazine, 

Tin  House,  which  debuts  this  month. 

The  plan  is  to  spotlight  underappreciated 

authors.  "There's  all  this  great  work 

out  there  that  doesn't  have  a  home," 

Schappell  says,  "so  we  created  one." 


When  it  comes  to  manners, 
Brooke  Astor  has  relied  on  her  mother's 
advice:  "She  always  said  to  me,  'Brooke, 
don't  ever  get  beyond  yourself.'  I  think  that 
has  helped  me  more  than  anything  else— that 
I  not  force  myself  on  people,  ever." 
Astor  gets  along  with  virtually  everyone,  which 
makes  sense,  because  she's  been  one  of 
New  York's  top  socialites  and  philanthropists 
since  the  1930s.  "I've  gone  everywhere  in 
New  York— from  Harlem  down  to  SoHo  and 
everywhere  in  between— and  I've  never 
had  a  disagreeable  thing  happen  to 
me,  because  I  love  people."  For  more  of 
Astor's  thoughts  on  polite  behavior, 
kindly  turn  to  page  142. 


For  contributing  editor  Judy  Bachrach, 

few  stories  have  had  the  historic 

weight  of  this  month's  investigation  of 

former  Chilean  dictator  Augusto  Pinochet. 

"This  is  a  story  about  what  happens  to 

evil  after  you  think  it  has  gone  away,"  says 

Bachrach.  "If  evil  is  not  dealt  with, 

it  comes  back  to  haunt  you."  The  article 

also  gave  Bachrach  the  chance  to  witness 

an  event  for  the  ages:  a  former  head  of 

state  being  held  legally  accountable  for  his 

actions.  "It's  very  rare,"  she  says 

of  Pinochet's  likely  trial,  "that  you  see 

history  being  effected  with  no 

one  else  noticing." 


After  15  years  as  V.F.'s  copy  editor,  Peter  Devine 
finally  found  a  subject  which  captivated  him  enough 
that  he  wanted  to  write  about  it:  the  rise  of  Latin  singer 
Ricky  Martin.  But  don't  expect  Devine  to  abandon 
copy  editing,  which  he  lovingly  compares  to  architecture. 
"To  get  a  building  to  stay  up,"  he  says,  "all  the  pieces 
have  to  be  the  right  size  and  in  the  right  position. 
If  you  choose  the  right  words,  a  story  will  stand  the 
test  of  time."  Admitting  that  even  the  experts  need 
help,  Devine  adds,  "It's  not  that  we  know  everything 
—it's  that  we  know  what  needs  to  be  looked  up." 

JUNE     1999 


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I  love  it!  The  stories  in  your  April  issue 
were  absolutely  fabulous:  Todd  S.  Pur- 
dum's  article  on  Roxbury  Drive,  "The 
Street  Where  They  Lived,"  was  won- 
derfully done,  as  were  Sam  Kash- 
ner's  story  on  Sammy  Davis  Jr.  and  Kim 
Novak,  "The  Color  of  Love,"  and  Patri- 
cia Bosworth's  investigation  into  the  mur- 
der of  Lana  Turner's  boyfriend.  I  espe- 
cially loved  Dominick  Dunne's  article  on 
Mike  Romanoff,  "The  Little  Prince." 

My  mother  adored  Hollywood  and  all 
the  hoopla.  Consequently,  while  most  chil- 
dren were  growing  up  on  Mother  Goose, 
I  was  being  raised  on  Motion  Picture  mag- 
azine and  Photoplay]  I  remember  those 
days  so  vividly,  and  today  you  have  taken 
me  on  a  very  much  wanted  trip  down 
memory  lane.  Thank  you,  Vanity  Fair.  You 
outdid  yourself  this  month  and  I  love  it! 

BEVERLY  TALIAFERRO 
Concord,  California 

I  JUST  RECEIVED  the  1999  Hollywood 
issue  of  Vanity  Fair.  After  scanning  the 
cover,  I  was  looking  forward  to  the  "400 
Spectacular  Pages  of  Movies,  Glamour 
and  Raw,  Naked  Power!" 

But  let's  be  truthful  here.  What  we 
have  is  185  Spectacular  Pages  of  Movies, 


— 

11       * 

LI 

Tin fifth  annual  Vanity  Fair 

Sunset  Boulevard. 

mi  MiihIi  10,  after  a  tveeklong 

'/ran  i    billboard  featuring 

Dun  Harry/tore.  Photographed 


1  fe 


. 


HIGH  ON  SUNSET 

Glamour  and  Raw,  Naked  Power,  and 
229  pages  of  advertising.  Don't  get  me 
wrong;  I  love  Vanity  Fair,  but  you  have 
to  admit,  the  cover  may  be  just  a  tad 
bit  misleading. 

DAVID  MOSER 
Clifton  Park,  New  York 

On  Neutra  Ground 

I  COMMEND  MITCH  GLAZER  for  his 
imaginative  and  flamboyant  vision  of 
what  life  may  have  been  like  in  the  West 
Hollywood  of  the  20s  ["Genius  and  Jeal- 
ousy," April].  While  I  was  born  into  that 
scene,  I  can't  say  I  have  memories  that 
correspond  with  his  cinematic  view  of  the 
free  love  and  nude  dancing  he  imputes  to 
the  Schindlers.  But,  hey,  I  was  only  two! 
There  are,  however,  a  couple  of  points 
worth  addressing.  First,  a  caption  to  one 
of  the  photographs  reads,  "Neutra  in  his 
house  on  Silverlake  Boulevard,  Los  An- 
geles, 1963."  In  fact,  the  picture  is  of  my 
master  bedroom  on  Neutra  Place  one 
block  away.  (It  may  have  been  incorrect- 
ly labeled  because  other  publications 
had  it  wrong.)  My  parents  occupied  this 
Neutra-designed  house  for  a  couple  of 


J 

1 

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years  while  I  rebuilt  the  fire-ravaged  Re- 
search House  on  Silverlake  Boulevard 
from  1963  to  1966. 

Second,  while  there  is  no  doubt  that 
Philip  Lovell's  decision  to  hire  Neutra  in- 
stead of  Schindler  for  the  Lovell  Health 
house  would  have  caused  ill  feelings  in 
Schindler,  there  was  an  adequate  reason 
for  his  choice.  In  addition  to  what  Gla- 
zer  says  about  Lovell's  various  problems 
with  Schindler,  the  Schindler-designed 
vacation  cabin  in  the  mountains  appar- 
ently also  failed,  so  Lovell  had  even  more 
reason  to  switch  architects.  Why  suggest, 
then,  that  Neutra  may  have  been  chosen 
as  a  result  of  his  "unethical  subterfuge 
of  lobbying  for  the  job"?  Where  does  that 
notion  come  from? 

Finally,  Glazer  states  early  on  that  both 
Neutra's  and  Schindler's  best  work  was 
done  between  1920  and  1960,  and  that 
"neither  ever  realized  a  grand  commis- 
sion." I  would  say  the  U.S.  Embassy  in 
Karachi,  the  Cyclorama  Center  at  Gettys- 
burg National  Military  Park  (threatened 
with  demolition  as  we  speak),  the  high-rise 
L.A.  County  Hall  of  Records,  the  Orange 
County  Courthouse  of  Santa  Ana,  and  the 
22-story  Graduate  Towers  at  the  Universi- 
ty of  Pennsylvania— all  but  one  of  which 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


DRD  &  TAYLOR 
•800-223-7440 


REFLECTIONS      OF      MEN 


JAVA   0,999  Son  Modems.  ,nc.  A»  nghK  reserved  Son,  Sun  Mm*™,  ft,  Son  Logo,  Ja»a.  g.  Ja,a  Col.ee  Cop  Logo.  SKn.  The  Ne.*.*  k  The  Compote,  and  We,e  The  Do,  In  Com  „  .ademato  o,  wm  Mm).  „,  Son  MK,osys,emS,  Inc  ,n  ,he  U  S  and  o,he, 


.hiiiIih"    www.5un.c0m 


By  powering 

the  Net,  we're  bringing  newborn 

companies  into  the  world  every  day.  As  you  may 

have  noticed,  their  stock  prices  are  kicking  and  screaming. 

While  a  baby  might  have  a  mothers  eyes  or  a  father's  nose, 
over  half  of  the  world's  leading  Internet  businesses  come  into 
this  world  with  a  Sun  Microsystems  brain.  From  online  bookstores 
to  brokerage  firms  to  news  sources  to  portals.  Consider  it  a  matter 
of  good  breeding.  After  all,  75%  of  Internet  backbone  traffic  already 
runs  on  our  Net-based  technologies,  not  to  mention  15  of  the  top  20 
ISPs.  That's  because  we  help  build  e-commerce  solutions  that  work. 
Whether  it's  our  high-performance  systems,  universal  Java^  software 
platform,  or  robust  Solaris"  operating  environment,  Sun  powers  busi- 
ness in  the  Network  Economy.  We  even  have  all  the  services  that 
help  keep  your  systems  up  and  running.  In  the  end,  the  most 
compelling  reason  can  easily  be  found  any  day  on 
your  nearest  stock  page.  Perhaps  we  should  be 
passing  out  cigars.  THE  NETWORK  IS 

THE  computer: 


We're  the  dot  in  .com: 


microsystems 


D 
D 


Winning  Streep:  Meryl 

Streep,  who  won  Academy 

Awards  for  Kramer 

vs.  Kramer  (1979)  and 

Sophie's  Choice  (1982), 

photographed  by  Herb 

Ritts  in  Los  Angeles  on 

January  24, 1999. 


RAVOl  on  a  1 1  kkii  i<   ISSUE  devoted  to 
,i  favorite  American  pastime  going  to  the 
movies.  Looking  back  at  the  rising  stars 
you've  photographed  for  the  magazine's 
cover  since  1995,  I  was  amazed  to  see 
how  many  have  become  so  well  known, 
and  how  many  have  earned  Oscar 
nominations.  This  year,  I  was  especially 
happy  to  see  three  of  my  favorite  new 
performers  featured  on  the  cover   Adrien 
Brody,  Reese  Witherspoon,  and,  most 
of  all,  Giovanni  Ribisi. 

The  portfolio  of  stars  and  legends  was 
sensational,  and  1  was  particularly  delighted 
with  the  inclusion  of  three  of  France's  best- 
Catherine  Deneuve,  Jean-Paul  Belmondo, 
and  Jean  Reno. 

Thanks,  too,  for  featuring  Meryl  Streep, 
the  "All-Star."  I  sometimes 
think  people  forget  the  powerful  role 
she  has  played  in  film  over  the  past  couple 
of  decades,  especially  in  light  of  her  astounding  11  Oscar 
nominations,  and  her  enormous  appeal  with  audiences  around 
the  world.  In  my  book,  there  isn't  an  actor  around  who  can 
touch  her  extraordinary  talent  or  versatility.  She  is  an 
enduring  legend  and  quite  possibly  the  greatest  actress 
of  the  20th  century. 

HARVEY  ECCLESTON 
Denver,  Colorado 


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Tel  0171-917  1000   Fax  0171 -91  7  1010   www.redcarnationhotels.com 


Represented  by  Preferred  Hotels  and  Resorts  Worldwide" 
(In  the  USA  1 -800  323  7500)  or  your  travel  professional 


were  completed  after  I960    would  qualil 

as  grand  commissions  for  Neutra,  ot 

firm,  and  our  associates.  I  was  project  a 

chitect  on  most  of  these,  and  continue 

conduct  the  affairs  of  the  firm  and  the  ir 

stitute  formed  by  my  dad   also  after  196( 

Otherwise,  it  was  most  entertainin 

to  view  such  an  imaginative  and  colo; 

ful  rerun  of  this  early  period  of  my  lift 

DION  NEUTR 

Architect  and  executive  consultai 

Institute  for  Survival  Through  Desig 

Los  Angeles,  Californi 

MITCH GLAZER  REPLIES:  As  I'm  sure  Dio 

Neutra  knmvs,  the  means  by  which  Richard  Neutr 
ended  up  with  the  Lovell  Health-house  commissio 
remains  a  controversy  Among  the  numerous  soura 
that  question  Neutra  s  actions  is  a  1958  interview 
with  historian  Esther  McCoy  in  which  Philip 
Lovell' s  wife,  Leah,  recalled,  "When  Richan 
[Neutra]  showed  us  the  first  plans  for  the  town  hou 
he  let  me  believe  that  RMS  [Schindler]  was  workin, 
with  him.  It  was  quite  a  while  before  Richard  let  i 
know  RMS  wasn't  in  it  with  him."  The  rumors 
misconduct  affected  Richard  Neutra  his  whole  life,  Ii 
a  letter  dated  January  28, 1969,  40  years  after  th< 
fact,  Richard  Neutra  wrote  to  Philip  Lovell,  "It 
terrible  to  me,  that  in  America  and  even  here 
Vienna  it  is  whispered— it  was  me,  who  stole  you 
sympathy  and  confidence  away  from  my  best  friend. 
My  description  of  a  "grand  commission— , 
AT&T  skyscraper  or  a  Guggenheim  Museum"  ■ 
referred  to  an  architect's  monumental- scale,  person 
al  statement,  such  as  Gehry's  Bilbao  museum.  Ian. 
aware  that  the  Neutra  firm  landed  some  big  jobs 
The  post-1960  buildings  Dion  Neutra  mention, 
were  all  designed  by  his  father  with  at  least  one  othe\ 
architect;  they  have  included  Robert  Akxandet 
Thaddeus  Longstreth,  Herman  Charles  Light  am 
James  R.  Friend,  and  Dion  Neutra.  I  still  respect- 
fully believe  that  Neutra' s finest  work  came  betweer 
1920  and  1960  and  that  he  never  realized  hi. 
defining  large-scale  masterpiece. 


Romanoff  Holiday 


VANITY     FAIR 


CONGRATULATIONS.  Your  April  issue 
is  another  triumph  for  your  magazine. 
Is  it  nostalgia  or  merely  a  sign  of  the 
times  that  people  my  age  find  your  arti- 
cles about  old  Hollywood  so  full  of  col- 
orful characters,  especially  in  compari- 
son with  contemporary  "showbiz  folk"? 
As  a  young  man  I  had  the  pleasure  to 
meet  Mike  Romanoff  ["The  Little 
Prince,"  by  Dominick  Dunne]  while  work- 
ing for  George  Raft  at  the  Colony  Club  in 
Berkeley  Square,  London,  in  the  mid-60s. 
Anybody  who  was  anybody  in  Holly- 
wood and  visiting  London  came  to  the 
club  to  see  George  Raft.  Unfortunately, 
the  dream  lasted  only  a  short  time,  and 

JUNE     1999 


LHIits 


because  of  my  young  age  I  did  not  fully 
appreciate  it.   But   my  experiences  from 
that  time  will  stay  in  my  memory  lorever. 
DAVID  COKNWILl. 

Buckhursl  Hill,  Essex,  I  ogland 


Wheels  of  Fortune 

AS  A  TEENAGER  in  the  1960s,  I  was  fasci- 
nated by  George  Barris's  "Kustoms"  and 
bought  every  copy  of  Car  Craft  I  could 
find  ["Randy  Man,"  by  Bruce  Handy, 
April].  Later  in  life,  I  managed  to  acquire 


two  ni  Geoigc  itiu  i  is \  creations   one  of 

the  dual  (iluas  he  lightly  modified  fbl  Ral 

Pack  members,  and  a  wild  1958  Corvette 

he  styled  alter  General  Motors'  XI*  Dream 

Car  that  made  its  Motorama  circuit.  It  is 
said  that  art,  to  be  significant,  must  evoke 
an  emotion.  I  can  guarantee  that  on  the 
rare  occasions  when  1  take  one  of  these 
cars  out  for  a  drive  every  head  turns 
some  out  of  shock,  some  out  of  appreci- 
ation. But  the  onlookers  all  agree  that  no 
one  is  building  em  like  they  used  to! 

CHARLF.S  MARSHALL 
Atherton,  California 


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Celeste's  Seasonings 

IN  "EVERYTHING  ABOUT  EVE"  [by  Sal 

Staggs,  April],  Celeste  Holm  referred 
the  rude  treatment  she  received  froi 
Bette  Davis  while  making  All  About  Ev 
It  so  upset  her,  she  claimed,  that  sr 
"never  spoke  to  her  again— ever." 

Not  long  ago,  I  watched  the  vide< 
tape  of  the  American  Film  Institute 
1977  tribute  to  Bette  Davis,  at  whic 
she  received  a  Life  Achievement  Awan 
Many  of  her  friends  and  colleagues  pai 
her  homage,  including  Celeste  Holr 
who  praised  Davis's  acting  and  calle 
her  a  "heroine."  Is  it  just  me,  or  do  h< 
comments  in  your  article  make  he 
appearance  at  the  A.F.I,  tribute  seer 
hypocritical? 

ALICE  CONNORTO 
New  York,  New  Yoi 

VIVA  VANITY  FAIR  for  your  Hollywoo 
issue.  It  was  a  real  pleasure  readin 
about  the  reel  stars  who  really  glitterec 
Miss  Loretta  Young  truly  lives  up  t 
her  name.  The  "Proust  Questionnaire 
with  Miss  Hedy  Lamarr  was  a  real  hool 
And,  of  course,  Bette  Davis.  Thank  yoi 
Mr.  Staggs,  for  your  article  "Everythin 
About  Eve."  To  my  knowledge  it  wa 
factually  correct,  and  I  appreciate  that 
was  quoted  properly. 

VIK  GREENFIELI 

Bette  Davis's  "longtime  secretary 

Wilton,  Connection 


It's  a  Wonderful  Place 

I  THOROUGHLY  ENJOYED  reading  abou 
the  past  and  present  residents  of  Rox 
bury  Drive  ["The  Street  Where  The; 
Lived"],  but  was  aghast  at  the  proclama 
tion  made  by  Steven  Wallace,  the  busi 
nessman  who  bought  Jimmy  Stewart'; 
house  from  his  children,  that  it  was  "jus 
a  dump."  I  have  walked  Roxbury  Driv< 
many  times  in  the  past  15  years  and  Mr 
Stewart's  residence  was  one  that  I  always 
admired  for  its  architectural  style  anc 
beauty.  With  its  meticulously  landscapec 
yard  and  an  immaculate  facade,  it  is  in 
conceivable  that  the  inside  of  his  hous< 
would  have  been  anything  but  impecca 
ble.  One  can  only  wonder  what  possesse< 
Mr.  Wallace  to  make  such  a  disparagiu 
remark.  Envy?  A  desire  to  defame?  Mr 
Stewart's  house  exuded  a  charm  and  ele 
gance  that  the  new,  larger  stuccoed  man 
sions  lack.  Walking  Roxbury  Drive  jus 
isn't  the  same  without  Jimmy's  house. 

JENNIFER  BARTOLUCCI 

Laguna  Hills,  California 
CONTI  NUE  I)   ON    PAG  I    j 

JUNE     1999 


Louis      Vuitton.      Epi      leather. 


Available  exclusively  in  Louis  Vuitton  shops  and  select 
Neiman  Marcus,  Sales  Fifth  Avenue,  Macy's,  Bloomingdale's, 
Marshall  Field's,  Dayton's,  Holt  Renfrew  &  Ogilvy  stores. 
For  information.      1800.285.2255      http://wwwvuitton.com 


LOUIS  VUITTON 


LHUms 


i    in    i  iiiim    PAOI     SI 

TODD  S.  PURDUM'S  article  on 

Beverly  Hills'  tabled  Roxbury 
Drive  was  quite  interesting,  but 
the  information  about  30s  croon- 
er Russ  Columbo  was  incorrect, 
due,  perhaps,  to  consistently  er- 
roneous reports  that  have  been 
published  elsewhere.  1  have  been 
researching  Mr.  Columbo's  life 
and  death  for  the  past  eight 
years,  and  am  the  editor-author 
of  a  Russ  Columbo  biographical 
Web  site. 

While  Columbo  did  indeed 
rent  1019  Roxbury  for  most  of 
1934,  he  vacated  that  property  in 
July  and  moved  to  1940  Outpost 
Circle  in  Hollywood.  The  acci- 
dental shooting  actually  occur- 
red in  September  at  584  Lillian 
Way,  also  in  Hollywood,  at  the 
small  bungalow  of  Columbo's 
best  friend,  portrait  photographer 
Lansing  Brown.  This  information 
is  documented  through  Colum- 
bo's death  certificate,  the  Coro- 
ner's Register,  and  1934  news- 
paper accounts  of  the  tragedy. 

MAX  PIERCE 
Hollywood,  California 


All  the  Raj 


Fun  house:  Jack  Benny  at  the  front  door  of  his 

Georgian  house  on  Roxbury  Drive.  It  had  a  mosaic  octopus  in 

the  swimming  pool.  Photographed  in  August  1952. 


}  1999  Datek  Online  Brokerage  Services  Corp.,  Member  NASD/SIPC    wwwdatek.com 
60     I     VANITY     FAIR 


Parodying  I  l<>//i  a  ood  i  latest  craze— spirit* 
al  immersion    Mike  Myen  posed  pir  ph 
lographer  David  LaChapelle  in  our  Apt 
portfolio  as  ,ni  lantern  demigod  who  is  nev 
far  from  his  agent  or  his  I'atmPilot  lint  ai 
steady  stream  of  incensed  letters  made  clet 
the  Hindu  community  (to  whom  LaChapel 
has  apologized  on  the  South  Asian  Joumalis 
Association 's  Web  site)  did  not  find  the  imaf 
particularly  uplifting.  Anil  SivakMtnaran 
Lawrenceville,  New  Jersey,  pointed  out  tk 
while  "many  of  the  popular  deities  are  the  bu 
of  many  jocular  references  even  in  pio, 
Hindu  families,  a  sense  of  piety  is  alway 
maintained"  A  sense  we  clearly  missei 
thought  Prashansa  Sai  of  Austin,  Texa 
"What  the  hell  are  you  people  thinking?"  sh 
asked.  "Would you  dress  Mahatma  Gandi. 
up  as  Jesus  Christ  and  put  him  on  the  cove 
The  double  standard  was  noted  by  many, 
was  Vanity  Fair V  perceived  ignorance  qfth 
religious  symbols  pictured,  such  as  the  fiowe 
garlands,  a  stuck-out  tongue,  and  the  blue 
painted  skin.  As  Hiren  Patel  of  Forest  HilL 
Nen  >  York,  put  it,  "Just  because  we  have  a  man 
key  god  doesn  't  mean  you  have  to  exploit  it. 

According  to  Sandhya  G  Ganti  ofNer, 
York,  however,  "The  brouhaha  over  Mik 
Myers  seems  reflective  of  only  a  minority  oj 
Hindu  fanatics"  As  a  child,  she  wrote,  "my  early 
lessons  in  Hindu  folklore  didn't  teach  me  reverena 
and  devotion.  Instead,  the  images  of  Lord  Krishna 
surrounded  by  half  naked  gopikas  taught  me  my 
first  lessons  in  sexuality."  A  thought  echoed  by 
Gotham  Chopra,  son  of  Deepak  Chopra:  "Tk 
principal  problem  with  any  faith  is  when  the  follow 
ers  begin  to  take  themselves  too  seriously" 


CORRECTION:  The  photograph  of  Matthen 
Shepard  on  page  211  of  the  March  1999  issue 
("The  Crucifixion  of  Matthew  Shepard")  was  noi 
correctly  credited.  In  fact,  the  photograph  was 
taken  by  Gina  van  Hoof.  Ms.  van  Hoof  took  the 
photograph  in  Raleigh,  North  Carolina,  in  1996. 
We  regret  the  error. 

Letters  to  the  editor  should  be  sent  with  the 
writer's  name,  address,  and  daytime  phone 
number  to:  Vanity  Fair,  350  Madison  Avenue, 
New  York,  New  York  10017.  Address  electronic 
mail  to  vfmail@vf.com.  The  magazine  reserves 
the  right  to  edit  submissions,  which  may  be  pub- 
lished or  otherwise  used  in  any  medium.  All 
submissions  become  the  property  of  Vanity  Fair. 

Those  submitting  manuscripts,  photographs, 
artwork,  or  other  material  to  Vanity  Fair  for 
consideration  should  not  send  originals  unless 
requested  in  writing  to  do  so  by  Vanity  Fair.  All 
unsolicited  materials  must  be  accompanied  by 
a  self-addressed  overnight-delivery  envelope, 
postage  paid.  However,  Vanity  Fair  is  not 
responsible  for  unsolicited  submissions. 

JUNE     1999 


St-'tUIAL  AUVtH  I  IOI1NU  StU  I  IUIN 


the  nantucket  film  festiva 


WHERE  SCREENWRITERS  INHERITTHE  EARTH 


The  Nantucket  Film  Festival  has  distinguished  itself  as  a 
top-tier  event  among  those  who  travel  the  festival  cir- 
cuit, and  is  most  notably  recognized  for  its  celebration  of 
the  screenwriter.  Since  its  inception  in  1996,  the  Festival 
has  remained  loyal  to  the  notion  that  the  writer's  contri- 
bution is  at  the  core  of  all  good  filmmaking.  From 
screenings  to  panel  discussions  to  staged  readings  to 
tributes,  every  aspect  of  the  festival  champions  the 
screenplay  as  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  motion  picture. 


Clockwise  from  top: 
Welcome  to  Nantucket; 
Bjorn  Sundquist  and  Petronella 
Barker  in  Thrane's  Method; 
Ben  Stiller;  Brooke  Shields. 


THE  NANTUCKET  FILM  FESTIVAL  SPONSOFSSTHISYEAR  INCLUDE 

Audi,  Cape  Air,  General  Foods  International  Coffees,  Grand  Marnier,  Kodak, 
Magic  Hat  Brewing  Co.,  Massachusetts  Film  Office,  M/K  Advertising,  NBC, 
Nautica,  Neutrogena,  Pacific  National,  Showtime.  Skky  Vodka,  Weber  Grill, 
Westchester  Air,  Writers  Guild  of  America,  Young's  Bike  Shop 


Nantucket  boasts  a  variety  of  fine 
restaurants,  as  well  as  casual 
eateries — perfect  for  a  quick  bite 
between  screenings  or  for  late-night 
dining  after  a  full  day  of  Festival 
activities.  Be  sure  to  check  out 
some  of  these  Festival  favorites: 

RESTAURANTS/BARS/CLUBS: 

12  Federal  Street 
508.228.9622 

12  Cambridge  Street 
508.228.7109 

71  Easton  Street 
508.228.8674 

IICKENBOX 

6  Dave  Street 
508.228.9717 

29  Broad  Street 
508.228.2400 

12  Federal  Street 
508.228.9622 

One  Straight  Wharf 
508.228.8886 

21  Federal  Street 
508.228.2121 

The  Festival  Hospitality/Registration 
Centre  is  located  at  the  Point  Breeze 
Hotel,  71  Easton  Street,  508.228.0313. 

For  pass  and  ticket  information,  call 
212.642.6339  or  visit  the  Festival  Web 
site  at  www.nantucketfilmfestival.org. 


According  to  Festival  attendee  Joseph  F. 
Derrico  Jr.,  vice  president  of  development 
and  production  for  Patriot  Entertainment, 
"Today,  more  than  ever,  the  Nantucket  Film 
Festival  is  a  lighthouse  that  guides  filmmak- 
ers toward  the  critical  importance  of  the  writ- 
ten word.  It  is  my  hope  and  belief  that  these 
'storytellers'  will  embrace  the  Festival's  light 
as  they  move  on  in  their  screenwriting  jour- 
neys." 

The  Nantucket  Film  Festival  has  indeed 
grown  by  leaps  and  bounds.  According  to 
Festival  Producer  Lauren  Mansfield,  over 
5,000  people  attended  last  year's  Festival, 
and  she  anticipates  even  more  participants 
this  June.  The  programming  directors  have 
received  approximately  500  films  submis- 
sions for  45  slots  and  over  600  scripts  for  the 
screenplay  competition.  Festival-goers  can 
expect  to  see  a  diverse  and  quality  mix  of 
films  from  every  genre  and  from  all  corners 
of  the  world. 

With  an  event  that  attracts  so  many  tal- 
ented screenwriters  and  scripts,  it's 
inevitable  that  buyers  and  distributors  will  be 
in  attendance.  Nantucket  has  labored  to 
keep  its  emphasis  on  the  artistic  side  of 
things  and  to  minimize  the  market  mentality 
that  pervades  some  of  the  bigger  festivals. 


However,  there  are  subtle  moments  whe 
deals  are  struck  and  careers  are  mad? 
According  to  Executive  Director  Jonatha 
Burkhart,  "People  have  been  known  to  sell  the 
screenplays  at  the  local  bar." 

The  intimate  and  informal  atmosphere  < 
the  festival  has  proved  to  be  a  major  drav 
When  asked  why  he  attended  the  Festiva 
writer/director  Brad  Anderson  {Next  Sto 
Wonderland)  replied  emphatically,  "N 
hype!"  For  Anderson,  the  most  importar 
conversations  take  place  while  sharing  a 
authentic  island  meal.  He  fondly  remember 
"eating  lobster  with  David  Newman  as  h 
described  how  they  got  that  famous  runninc 
through-the-field  shot  in  Bonnie  &  Clyde!' 

For  one  anonymous  (and  amorous)  filr 
maker,  Nantucket  will  always  invoke  th 
memory  of  "standing  mere  inches  behin 
Brooke  Shields  at  the  Ring  Lardner  Jr.  Tribute 
afraid  to  tell  her  I  used  to  cut  her  photos  ol 
of  Tiger  Beat  when  I  was  twelve." 

At  every  turn,  there  are  opportunities  t 
learn  from  the  pros  and  to  test  the  water 
without  restrictions.  Writers  use  the  positiv 
energy  of  the  festival — and  the  spirit  of  th 
island  itself — to  inspire  creativity,  cultivat 
new  friendships,  and  indulge  their  passio 
for  cinema. 


*Nr$ 


I 


, 


^ 


•>V^J* 


t 

•« 


The  gods  were  known  to  streak  across  the  heavens  on  chariots  of  pure  fire. 

Here's  the  two-door  model. 


Most  cars  you  compare  to  the  competition. 
But  only  a  rare  few  can  be  compared 
to  myth.  Presenting  the  new  Audi  TT. 
The  sports  car  in  its  absolute  form. 
A  force  of  nature  with  a  gear  shift. 
The  TT's  taut,  mercurial  body  contains 
what  can  easily  be  described  as  fire 


from  the  heavens.  Capable  of  igniting 
the  road  with  a  simple  push  of  a  pedal. 
Inspiring  and  humbling  to  any  mortal 
fortunate  enough  to  hold  the  reins.  Look 
at  it.  Sit  inside  it.  Begin  to  understand 
what  it  is  like  to  wield  such  power.  Yes, 

lucky  human.  Your  fire  chariot  is  waiting. 


Call  1-800-FOR-AUDI  or  visit  us  at:  www.audiusa.com  for  more  information.  MSRP  of  2000  Audi  TT  Coupe  is  $30,500  not  including  dealer  prep.,  destination  charge,  taxes,  license.  Mod 


dual  dealer  price  may  vary.  "Audi"  and  the  four  rings  emblem  are  registered  trademarks  and  "TT"  is  a  trademark  of  AUDI  AG.  ©1999  Audi  of  America,  Inc. 


Audi 


SPECIAL  ADVERTISING  SECTION 


screenings 


Nantucket's  screening  program  encompasses  a  vibrant  mix  of 
films  across  a  wide  spectrum  of  genres.  There  are  no  restrictions 
on  where  a  film  comes  from  or  when  it  was  made. 

Says  Film  Programming  Director  Mystelle  Brabbee,  "We  pre- 
fer not  to  limit  our  selection  of  films  to  a  predetermined  theme. 
Rather,  we  wait  to  see  what  each  year's  crop  of  films  presents 
us  and  let  the  theme  grow  organically."  And  Artistic  Director  Jill 
Goode  adds,  "By  focusing  on  screenwriting,  we  transcend  being 
categorized." 

The  foremost  standard  Goode  and  Brabbee  apply  is  excel- 
lence. Ultimately,  what  they  hope  to  find  are  high-quality,  writer- 
driven  films  which  expand  the  viewer's  appreciation  of  a  well- 
written  story.  "Whether  a  work  comes  from  an  independent 
filmmaker,  a  studio  screenwriter,  or  an  amateur  writer,  foreign  or 
not,  what  matters  is  substance,"  says  Goode. 

This  year's  program  features  a  diverse  and  provocative  line  up 
of  international  films,  regional  films,  short  films,  and  films  from 
first-time  writers/directors.  There  is  also  a  fine  selection  of  doc- 
umentaries, as  well  as  archival  films  which  honor  the  work  of  the 
Festival's  tributee — who,  this  year,  is  Jay  Presson  Allen. 


INTERNATIONAL  FILMS 

The  Nantucket  Film  Festival  welcomes  the  work  of  int€ 
national  filmmakers,  for  the  fresh  perspectives  their  st< 
ries  provide  and  for  the  authenticity  they  lend  their  sul 
jects.  Given  the  diversity  of  today's  moviegoers,  filrr 
have  become  important  ambassadors  between  culture 
and  religions.  "To  see  a  film  from  Sweden  or  Canada  ( 
India,  we  feel  as  though  we're  being  transported  to  anotl 
er  place,  another  reality,"  explains  Brabbee.  "Yet,  at  th 
same  time,  these  films  inform  our  collective  sensibilit 
and  reveal  similarities  among  cultures." 

Almost  half  of  the  screenings  slated  for  the  199 
Festival  are  international  films  with  widespread  appeal, 
the  Norwegian  film  Thrane's  Metode  {Thrane's  Methoc 
writer/director  Unni  Straume  tackles  the  universal  them 
of  love,  as  well  as  the  fear  of  and  desire  for  success. 
Bure  Baruta  (The  Powder  Keg),  a  Yugoslavian-inspire 
drama,  veteran  director  Goran  Pakalijevic  portrays  th 
everyday  horrors  of  life  in  post-war  Belgrade — and  st 
manages  to  elicit  unanimous  approval.  From  French  dire' 
tor  Radu  Mihaileanu  comes  another  gripping  war  story- 
this  one  set  during  World  War  1 1 .  Train  de  Vie  ( Train  of  Lift 
is  a  tragicomedy  based  on  the  real-life  struggle  of  a  grou 
of  Jews  who  used  a  train  to  escape  Nazi  persecution. 


Short  films  are  submitted  from  every  corner  of  the  glob 
and  span  every  genre,  from  noir  thriller  to  comedic  wes 
em  to  stop-motion  animation.  Through  the  short  film 
program,  aspiring  auteurs  have  an  opportunity  to  exercis 
their  creative  license  and  elevate  themselves  in  the  publi 
eye. 

Some  of  this  year's  shorts  include:  Baby  Steps;  Culture 
Desserts;  Devil  Doll,  Ring  Pull;  Dirt;  Fuzzy  Logic;  Hert 
Herd;  Human  Remains;  I  Remember;  Ladies  Room;  Ma 
and  Dog;  More;  Searching  for  Carrie  Fisher;  Script  Docto 
Stalker  Guilt  Syndrome;  and  Zoltar  from  Zoran. 


Clockwise  from  top:  Adrian  Grenier  and 
Clark  Gregg  in  The  Adventures  of 
Sebastian  Cole;  Michael  Imperioli  in 
On  the  Run;  Franka  Potente  in  Run  Lola 
Run;  Lionel  Abelanski  in  Train  of  Life. 


Clockwise  from  top: 
Ally  Sheedy  and 
Courtney  Collier  in 
The  Autumn  Heart,  a 
scene  from  More; 
Kathy  Bates  in  Baby 
Steps;  Stephanie 
Berry  and  Joseph 
Sirvao  in  A  Day  in 
Black  and  White. 


REGIONAL  FILMS 


'he  regional  films  screened  during 
Nantucket's  first  three  years  demonstrated 
m  original  and  creative  flair  in  their  explo- 
ation  of  cinema.  "This  year,"  says  Brabbee, 
'the  Festival  will  call  special  attention  to  the 
)utstanding  filmmaking  taking  place  in  our 
)wn  backyard  by  making  regional  films  an 
official  category."  Regional  gems  from  previ- 
ous years  include:  Southie,  Home  Before 
Dark,  Man  with  a  Plan,  and  Next  Stop 
A/onderland. 

This  June,  New  England  native  Davidlee 
A/illson  will  make  his  feature  film  debut  with 
The  Autumn  Heart,  a  bittersweet  tale  about 
i  family  torn  apart  by  divorce  and  the  forces 
jf  nature  that  reunite  them.  The  film  stars 
Emmy-  and  Tony  Award-winner  Tyne  Daly, 
critically  acclaimed  actress  Ally  Sheedy,  and 
A/illson  himself. 


FIRST-TIME 
WRITERS/DIRECTORS 

-irst-time  writers/directors  face  the  daunting 
and  difficult  task  of  getting  their  work  seen, 
t  is  fortunate,  then,  that  film  festivals  have 
:aken  on  the  important  role  of  discovering — 
3nd  showcasing — emerging  talent.  The 
Mantucket  Film  Festival  is  proud  to  introduce 
:he  work  of  some  very  talented  new  film- 
makers. 

On  the  Run  is  the  first  feature-length  film 
Torn  director  Bruno  de  Almeida,  whose  pre- 
/ious  work  includes  commercials,  music 
/ideos,  documentaries,  and  short  films.  The 
screenplay,  by  Joseph  Minion  (who  wrote 
After  Hours  and  Mirror,  Mirror  for  Martin 
Scorsese),  traces  a  night  of  reckoning  for 


two  friends,  as  they  both 
get  caught  up  in  a  strange 
and  reckless  flurry  of 
events  that  will  change 
their  lives  forever. 

From  first-time  feature 
writer/director    Desmond 
Hall  comes  A  Day  in  Black 
and  White — a  film  which 
explores  various  angles  of 
the  race  question  and,  in  so  doing,  prompts 
viewers  to  confront  their  own  beliefs  about 
race  relations  in  America.    Says  Hall,  "If  A 
Day  in  Black  and  White  acts  as  a  catalyst  for 
honesty... I  will  be  very  satisfied.   The  prob- 
lems of  race  division  will  not  be  resolved 
until  we  talk." 

A  Nantucket  selection  which  has  already 
begun   to   generate   conversation    is    The 
Adventures  of  Sebastian  Cole — the  feature 
debut  of  writer/director  Tod  Williams.    One 
enthusiastic     reviewer     asserted,     "Even 
though  it  is  his  first  film,  Tod  Williams  has 
already  proven  himself  a  master  storyteller, 
with  an   uncanny  eye  for  the  details  that 
make  us  human."    Laden  with  unpredictable 
characters  and  rich,  tight  dialogue, 
Adventures  takes   a    poignant   and 
vital    look   at   the    path    to   finding 
oneself. 

The  Festival  is  also  excited  to  host 
the  world  premiere  of  American 
Detective,  a  dark  comedy  from  first- 
time  writer/director  Dan  Brown. 
Inspired  by  the  advertisements  in  a 
True  Crime  magazine,  this  character- 
driven  film  exposes  the  voyeuristic 
obsessions  of  a  mail-order  detective. 


So,  how  often  do  you  get  burned  by  your  grill7 

With  chicken  that's  singed  beyond  recognition?  Roasts 
that  are  pink  on  one  end  and  overdone  on  the  other?  And 
well-done  steaks  when  you  wanted  medium-rare? 

Well,  your  trial  by  fire  is  over. 

Presenting  the  Performer"  Charcoal  Grill  -  a  revolutionary 
combination  of  barbecuing  philosophies.  You  see,  we  took  the 
convenience  of  our  gas  grills  and  combined  them  with  the 
best  features  of  our  charcoal  grills. 

To  spectacular  results. 

It's  nothing  less  than  the  first  charcoal  grill  to  offer  the  ease 
of  a  gas  start.  No  matches.  No  lighter  fluid.  No  mess.  Just  a 
single  touch  of  the  button  and  our  patented  Touch-N-Go'" 
Gas  Ignition  System  lights  your  coals  evenly  and  efficiently. 
The  first  time.  Every  time. 


HIS   SUMMER,  MEN  WILL  SPEND  OVER  TWO   BILLION 

HOURS  GRILLING.  AND  APPROXIMATELY  ONE 
ILLION    HOURS   MAKING   EXCUSES   FOR  THE   RESULTS 


The  Performer  gives  you  control,  too.  With  our  charcoal 
baskets,  or  Char-Baskets'"  as  we  call  them,  you'll  be  able  to 
guarantee  friends  and  family  perfect  steaks,  hamburgers 
and  chops  every  time.  Simply  move  the  Char-Baskets  to  the 
middle  of  the  grill  and  cook  over  them 
for  what  is  known  as  Direct  Cooking. 
For  juicy  prime  rib,  whole  chicken  and 
turkey  (yes,  you  can  grill  a  turkey),  use 
the  Indirect  Method  of  Cooking  by 
sliding  the  Char-Baskets  apart  and 
placing  the  meat  over  a  drip  pan  in 
the  middle. 

Other  features  that  make  the 
Performer  the  charcoal  grill  to  beat?  A 
hinged  cooking  grate  that  makes  it  easy 
to  add  charcoal.  Large,  crackproof  wheels  designed  to  roll 
over  grass,  gravel  and  other  uneven  surfaces.  Locking 
casters  that  prevent  rolling.  And  stainless  steel  hooks  for 
barbecue  tools. 

What's  more,  we  created  our  stainless  steel  work 
surface  not  only  to  clean  up  easily,  but  to  allow  you  to 
keep  everything  you  need  exactly  where  you  need  it.  Close 
at  hand.  The  ingenious  design  doesn't  stop  there,  though. 
Underneath  the  work  surface  you'll  find  a  storage  bin  large 
enough  to  keep  20  pounds  of  charcoal  dry. 


Then  there's  the  patented  Performer  thermometer.  It  not 
only  monitors  the  internal  temperature  of  the  grill,  but  also 
doubles  as  a  meat  probe  to  check  the  doneness  of  your  food. 
Our  One-Touch"  Cleaning  System  features  three  aluminized 
steel  blades  that  scrape  and  sift  ashes  out  of  the  kettle 
grill  into  the  ash  catcher.  The  ash  catcher  then  releases 
for  easy  disposal. 

Now  when  it  comes  to  durability,  we  make  a  guarantee 
that's  strong  as  steel.  Literally.  That's  because  we  use  heavy- 
walled  steel  tubing  and  robot-weld  it  together  for  extra 
strength  and  stability  in  the  cart.  Our  signature  kettle  is  made 
from  the  finest-grade  steel  and  coated  with  a  porcelain  enamel 
that'll  never  rust,  peel  or  fade.  This  isn't  a  grill  for  one  season; 
it's  a  grill  for  a  lifetime. 

When  it  comes  to  your  satisfaction,  you'll  find  no  excuses 
here,  either.  The  Performer  comes  with  a  45-day  money-back 
guarantee.  As  well  as  a  five-year  limited  warranty. 

Just  imagine.  No  more  excuses,  apologies  or  regrets. 
Just  delicious  food  every  time.  To  learn  more  about  the 
Performer  Grill,  also  available  without  the  Touch-N-Go 
Ignition  System,  call  1-800-99-WEBER  (1-800-999-3237)  in 
the  U.S.  or  Canada  for  a  complimentary  copy  of  the 
Performer  video  and  brochure.  Or 
visit  our  World  Wide  Web  site 
at  www.weberbbq.com. 


tiiieber 


M'l  '.IAI    ADVI  HIIMIJ',  M  UION 


|il  ll>> 
Left:  Ring  Lardner,  Jr.  and  Brian  Williams;  Center,  L  to  R:  John  Hamburg,  Jeremy  Leven,  and  Steve  Klein;  Right:  David  Newman 


FESTIVAL  TRIBUTES  &  AWARDS 

THE  2ND  ANNUAL  WRITER'S  TRIBUTE 
SPONSORED  BY  NBC 

In  1998,  the  Festival  introduced  the  Writer's  Tribute  to  honor 
the  work  of  a  distinguished  screenwriter — an  individual 
whose  unique  perspective  on  and  contribution  to  the  world  of 
cinema  serves  as  an  inspiration  to  future  writers  of  film.  This 
year's  tribute  recognizes  the  exceptional  career  of  Jay 
Presson  Allen — screenwriter,  novelist,  playwright,  and  pro- 
ducer. 

Her  list  of  film  credits  is  extensive  in  length,  scope,  and 
medium,  and  includes  such  classics  as  Cabaret,  Just  Tell  Me 
What  You  Want,  Mamie,  Prince  of  the  City,  and  The  Prime  of 
Miss  Jean  Brodie.  Says  Allen,  "I  may  not  be  the  best  writer  in 
Hollywood,  but  I  think  I  have  the  greatest  stretch.  I  can  write 
about  more  different  things  than  anyone  I  can  think  of."  She's 
written  thrillers,  dramas,  and  comedies  for  the  stage,  televi- 
sion, and  screen.  What  her  scripts  have  in  common  are  their 
quality  character  studies;  and,  in  general,  her  characters  turn 
out  like  herself — smart,  tough,  and  funny. 

TONY  COX  AWARD  FOR  SCREENWRITING 
SPONSORED  BY  SHOWTIME 

The  Tony  Cox  Award  for  Screenwriting  was  named  for  the 
former  chairman  and  CEO  of  Showtime  Networks.  Cox  was  a 
longtime  resident  of  Nantucket,  a  devoted  fan  of  and  contrib- 
utor to  the  Festival,  and  a  firm  believer  in  mentoring  talent. 
The  award  which  bears  his  name  encourages  submissions 
from  emerging  screenwriters,  in  hopes  of  casting  a  spotlight 
on  the  writer's  craft. 

A  jury  of  noted  writers,  directors,  and  producers  selects 
the  winning  screenplay  after  several  rounds  of  readings.  This 
year's  jury  includes  Nancy  Savoca,  Peter  Newman,  Allison 
Anders,  Bingham  Ray,  and  Kelly  Reichart.  Winners  receive 
$2,000,  a  first-look  option  from  Showtime  Networks,  and 
meetings  with  agents  and  producers. 

AUDIENCE  AWARDS 

The  Nantucket  Film  Festival  is  noncompetitive,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Audience  Awards.  Throughout  the  week, 
Festival  guests  cast  their  ballots  for  the  best  feature  and  the 
best  short.  Votes  are  tallied,  and  the  Festival  favorite  for  each 
category  is  announced  at  the  Closing  Night  Party.  Last  year's 
winners  were  Frank  Military  for  Blind  Faith  and  Tim  Loane  for 
Dance,  Lexie,  Dance. 


FESTIVAL  PROGRAMS 

Before  the  camera  rolls,  a  director  will  assemble  the  cast  of. 
film  and  hold  a  read-through  of  the  script.  Staged  Readme 
are  a  window  into  the  very  beginning  of  the  filmmakir 
process.  The  fun  of  attending  the  staged  readings  is  in  watel 
ing  a  story  come  alive  before  your  eyes.  With  their  casts 
entertaining  actors,  the  readings  are  spontaneous,  casuc 
and  always  full  of  surprises. 

For  the  writer,  readings  afford  a  great  opportunity  to  he; 
how  words  on  paper  play  to  an  audience  (where  the  laugh 
are,  or  aren't).  In  June,  the  Festival  will  hold  a  special  readir 
of  Mayberly's  Kill,  a  screenplay  by  this  year's  Writer's  Tribut 
honoree,  Jay  Presson  Allen. 

Mornings  at  the  Festival  kick  off  at  the  Cambridge  Stree 
Restaurant,  where  film  professionals  and  film  lovers  ease  int 
the  day  with  a  cup  of  coffee  and  casual  conversation  aboi 
any  and  all  aspects  of  moviemaking.  Morning  Coffee  wit 
the  Writer  has  become  a  favorite  Festival  ritual.  For  vetera 
writers,  directors,  and  producers,  Morning  Coffee  provides  a 
intimate  setting  in  which  to  share  stories,  swap  ideas,  an 
pass  the  cream  cheese.  For  filmmakers  just  getting  started 
the  business,  it's  a  unique  opportunity  to  learn  from  the  pro; 
ask  questions,  get  feedback  on  works  in  progress,  and  drin 
the  coffee  rather  than  dispense  it. 

Panel  Discussions  are  scheduled  throughout  the  wee 
and  offer  the  chance  to  learn  about  experiences  artists  ha 
while  making  their  projects.  Composed  of  an  impressiv 
group  of  writers  and  writers'  advocates,  the  panels  explor 
the  personal  and  political  issues  that  drive  the  writing  proces 
and  influence  writers'  creative  choices.  I 


Disaronno  Originate. 


Italian.  Sensual.  Warm. 


Light  A  Fire 


m 

QRIGMIE 


(Jirisjlip 


OLD  ENOUGH  TO  DIE 


While  the  U.S.  lectures  other  nations  on  human  rights,  it  remains 

one  of  only  four  countries-including  Yemen  and  Nigeria-that  execute  their 

troublesome  youth.  And  if  politicians  in  some  states  get  their  way, 

we  could  have  even  eighth-graders  sitting  on  death  row 


he  United  States  of  America  ex- 
ecutes its  own  children.  What  is 
wrong  with  that  sentence?  Well, 
nothing  factual.  We  may  differ 
about  whether  the  formative  years 
are  an  age  of  innocence  or  ex- 
perience, but  a  whole  body  of  law  estab- 
lishes and  defends  certain  age  limits,  be- 
low which  one  is  considered  a  child. 
And  73  such  children  have  been  growing 
old  under  sentence  of  death  in  Ameri- 
can prisons  as  I  write.  William  Blake, 
who  perhaps  excelled  all  other  authors 
in  his  rage  against  cruelty  to  the  young, 
put  his  "Little  Boy  Lost"  in  the  "Experi- 
ence" section  of  his  Songs  of  Innocence 
and  of  Experience: 


BRUTAL  JUSTICE 

Fourteen-year-old  George  Stinney,  after 

his  arrest  for  the  murder  of  an  11-year-old 

girl  in  Clarendon  County,  South  Carolina, 

March  1944.  Less  than  three  months  later, 

he  was  executed  by  electric  chair. 


The  weeping  child  could  not  be  heard, 
The  weeping  parents  wept  in  vain; 
They  strip'd  him  to  his  little  shirt, 
And  bound  him  in  an  iron  chain. 

And  burn'd  him  in  a  holy  place, 
Where  many  had  been  burn'd  before: 
The  weeping  parents  wept  in  vain. 
Are  such  things  done  on  Albion's  shore. 

Albion's  shore— an  antique  name  for 
England— was,  in  the  18th  and  19th  centu- 


ries, famous  for  two  things:  intense  senti- 
mentality about  images  of  innocent  chil- 
dren, and  extreme  ruthlessness  in  the  sex- 
ual and  commercial  and  penal  treatment 
of  the  very  young.  We  shake  our  heads, 
now,  at  the  obviousness  of  this  hypocrisy. 
But  here's  what  happened  to  George  Stin- 
ney, in  Clarendon  County,  South  Caroli- 
na, on  June  16,  1944.  At  the  age  of  14, 
weighing  95  pounds  and  standing  five  feet 
and  one  inch,  he  was  lashed  into  an  elec- 
tric chair  and  a  mask  was  put  over  his 
face.  He  was  then  given  a  hit  of  2,400 
volts.  The  mask,  which  was  perhaps  too 
big  for  him,  thereupon  slipped  off.  The 
witnesses  saw  his  wide-open  and  weeping 
eyes,  and  his  dribbling  mouth,  before  an- 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


*4 


&3& ' « 


«* 


Disaronno  Originate. 

Italian.  Sensual.  Warm 


:„!,AKHNN° 


Light  A  Fire 


DKAR0W0j_ 
ORJGIVAIE 1 

AfMRETTO 


KM  IS 


ftn  Sellers  was  put  down  like  a  diseased  animal. ' 


other  two  inks  ended  the  busi-  I 

ncss  and  fried  him  for  good.  I 

They  may  not  have  "burn'd  him  I 

in  .1  holy  place,"  but  it  was  a  I 

reverent  state  occasion  and  you  I 

can  bet  there  was  a  minister  on  I 
hand  to  see  fair  play  done. 

Rut,  you  say,  this  kind  of  I 
thing  doesn't  go  on  any 
more.  That's  true  up  to  a  | 
point.  On  Albion's  shore,  it  cer- 
tainly doesn't.  Nor  are  juve- 
niles sentenced  to  death  in  any 
other  European  nation.  Since  1990,  in- 
deed, only  six  countries  have  executed 
juvenile  offenders:  Iran,  Yemen,  Pakistan, 
Saudi  Arabia,  Nigeria,  and  the  United 
States  of  America.  The  United  States  has, 
you  may  be  interested  to  hear,  left  the 
silver  and  bronze  medals  to  be  divided 
among  these  other  fine  contenders,  keep- 
ing the  gold  for  itself  both  by  conducting 
the  most  executions  and  by  having  the 
largest  number  of  juveniles  awaiting  ex- 
tinction on  death  row. 

Now,  exactly  what  kind  of  village 
does  this  take?  I  can  scarcely  scan  the 
press  without  learning  that  "our  kids" 
are  in  need  of  more  protection.  In  their 
name,  I  am  supposed  to  have  my  Inter- 
net access  and  my  cable  TV  more  close- 
ly supervised.  It  will  be  years  until  I  can 
send  my  teenage  son  out  to  buy  my 
whiskey  and  my  tobacco  supplies,  and 
years  until  he  can  buy  his  own.  You 
can't  vote  or  be  impaneled  on  a  jury  or 
sign  up  to  be  all  you  can  be  in  Kosovo 
until  you  are  at  least  18.  But  if  you  step 
far  enough  out  of  line,  the  protections 
that  safeguard  the  minor  are  abruptly 
withdrawn,  and  the  state  will  snuff  you 
like  an  old  sow  that  eats  her  farrow.  On 
the  whole,  and  in  most  states  of  the 
union  that  rely  on  the  death  penalty,  you 
need  to  be  at  least  16  to  hear  a  judge 
instruct  the  proper  authorities  to  take 
your  life.  But  Governor  Gary  Johnson 
of  New  Mexico  and  former  governor 
Pete  Wilson  of  California  are  impatient 
with  this  "kid-glove"  leniency.  They  have 
toyed  with  the  idea  that  eighth-graders 
be  brought  within  the  tough-love  em- 
brace of  the  gas  chamber  and  the  lethal 
injection,  Johnson  by  calling  for  the  exe- 
cution of  13-year-olds,  and  Wilson  (in- 
fluenced no  doubt  by  California's  laid- 
back  style)  by  suggesting  that  the  author- 
ities wait  only  until  the  perp  is  14. 

Let's  try  not  to  be  sentimental,  or,  rath- 


k 


THE  LOST  BOY 

Seventeen-year-old  Sean  Sellers  on  death  row 

in  Oklahoma  in  1986.  A  U.S.  Court  of  Appeals 

found  evidence  of  "factual  innocence,"  yet 

Sellers  was  executed  in  February. 


er,  let  us  see  what  happens  if  we  are  not. 
Teenagers  can  be  hell,  and  they  have  at- 
tained the  age  of  reason  if  not  responsibili- 
ty. Most  adults,  reviewing  the  molten  years 
of  their  own  puberty,  can  think  of  at  least 
one  occasion  where  they  really,  really 
needed  a  break  or  a  second  chance,  and 
where  their  lives  and  careers  might  have 
been  literally  as  well  as  figuratively  over  if 
they  hadn't  had  one.  ("Get  me  out  of  this 
and  I  swear  ...  " )  But  then,  most  people 
manage  to  get  by  without  turning  a  .44  on 
their  folks  and  without— as  young  Master 
George  Stinney  was  said  to  have  done- 
murdering  an  11-year-old  girl.  Sean  Sellers, 
the  condemned  American  youth  most  re- 
cently executed,  for  crimes  committed 
when  he  was  16,  was  a  bad  poster  boy  for 
any  cause.  The  state  of  Oklahoma  killed 
him  last  February  4,  for  the  casual  murder 
of  a  store  clerk  and  the  deliberate  slaying 
of  his  mother  and  stepfather.  He  never  se- 
riously pretended  to  be  innocent;  indeed, 
he  was  engaged  at  the  time  in  a  supposed- 
ly satanic  effort  to  violate  all  of  the  Ten 
Commandments.  While  on  death  row,  he 
additionally  failed  to  get  my  personal  vote 
by  professing  ostentatious  reborn  Christian 
evangelism,  and  by  featuring  on  a  Web  site 
devoted  to  redemption  through  fundamen- 
talist writings  and  a  comic  book.  However, 
you  do  not  lose  any,  let  alone  all,  of  your 
civil  rights  by  opting  for  either  yucky  cults 
or  sickly  religiosity.  (Where  would  we  be  if 
you  did?)  And  the  question  for  me  be- 
came, as  I  went  into  the  case:  Was  this 
boy  gravely  sick  or  not?  There  is,  after  all, 
a  legal  and  moral  presumption  against  exe- 
cuting even  adults  who  are  insane. 


nyone  who  has  been  involved 
with  a  death-row  prisoner 
knows  the  piercing  yet  dull 
sense  of  pity  and  shame  that  de- 
scends. It's  always  the  same:  the 
I  family  background  that  makes 
B|  you  want  to  weep;  the  home  usu- 
ally festooned  (as  in  the  Sellers 
case)  with  deadly  weapons;  the 
educational  and  cultural  level 
that  would  raise  eyebrows  in  Cal- 
cutta or  Bogota;  the  overworked 
public  defender  who  had  two 
dimes  and  two  days  to  make  his 
case;  the  absence  of  any  useful  teacher  or 
priest  or  shrink  or  "counselor"  until  it  was 
too  damned  late;  the  occasional  thoughtful 
relative  who  puts  up  some  dough;  the  end- 
less hearings  and  rehearings  and  then  the 
long,  dreary  wait  for  a  "stay"  of  execution 
that  becomes  a  torture  if  it  comes  at  all. 
Sometimes,  at  the  last  minute,  an  interces- 
sion from  a  celebrity  or  a  certified  moral 
authority.  And  then  the  tawdry  ritual  with 
the  needles  or  the  gas  or  the  electric  cur- 
rent, and  then  on  to  the  next. 

Often  abandoned  as  an  infant  by  his 
truck-driving  mother  and  stepfather  (his 
maternal  grandfather  took  his  side  at  trial) 
and  introduced  to  Satanism  by  one  of  his 
many  baby-sitters,  Sean  Sellers  seems  to 
have  suffered  from  a  childhood  brain  le- 
sion and  from  multiple-personality  disor- 
der. Bob  Ravitz,  the  public  defender  who 
represented  him,  was  allowed  by  the  state 
$750  to  pay  for  an  expert  witness  but,  on 
this  princely  scale,  wasn't  able  to  afford  a 
proper  psychiatric  evaluation.  The  extent  of 
the  boy's  disorder— several  different  styles 
of  handwriting,  several  different  names  for 
himself,  various  delusions,  even  the  ability 
to  switch  from  left-  to  right-handedness- 
was  not  discovered  until  he  had  been  on 
death  row  for  an  awfully  long  time.  But  the 
whole  point  of  the  appeals  procedure,  and 
the  whole  justification  for  the  grisly  busi- 
ness of  warehousing  condemned  people,  is 
to  avoid  a  miscarriage  of  justice. 

In  1992,  six  years  after  his  trial,  a  panel 
of  three  physicians  administered  a  quanti- 
tative electroencephalograph  test  to  the 
boy,  who  had  become  a  legal  adult  while 
in  prison.  They  discovered  the  traces  of 
the  childhood  brain  injury,  the  presence 
of  several  "alter"  personalities,  and  the 
strong  likelihood,  therefore,  that  Sean  Sel- 
lers had  not  in  any  sense  attained  a  condi- 
tion of  criminal  responsibility  when  he 
was  tried  and  convicted. 

Here  comes  the  part  that  causes  me 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


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Disaronno  Originale. 


Italian.  Sensual.  Warm. 


Light  A  Fire 


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'    UH 

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lilduns 


^Yoiiran  I  vote  if  you  are  under  18,  but  the  state  can  snuff  you 


to  make  a  low  and  growling 

noise,  even  as  I  reread  il  tor 
the  dozenth  time.  In  February 

ll)')N  the  United  States  Court 
ol'  Appeals  Tenth  Circuit  final- 
ly heard  the  medical  and  psy- 
chiatric evidence  that  had  gone 
undiscovered  at  the  initial  ar- 
raignment. The  three  judges 
wrote  the  following  opinion: 


Although  troubled  by  the  extent 
of  uncontroverted  clinical  evi- 
dence proving  Petitioner  suffers  from  Multi- 
ple Personality  Disorder,  now  and  at  the 
time  of  the  offenses  of  conviction,  and  that 
the  offenses  were  committed  by  an  "alter" 
personality,  we  are  constrained  to  hold  Peti- 
tioner has  failed  to  establish  grounds  for 
federal  habeas  corpus  relief.  Even  though 
his  illness  is  such  that  he  may  be  able  to 
prove  his  factual  innocence  of  those  crimes, 
ue  believe  that  he  must  be  left  to  the  avenue 
of  executive  clemency  to  pursue  that  claim. 
[My  italics.] 

So  a  sober  panel  of  robed  figures,  calm- 
ly reviewing  the  life-and-death  case  of  a  dis- 
turbed child,  determines  in  writing  that 
said  child  may  be  "factually"  or  technically 
innocent,  but  further  determines  that  this  is 
not  really  any  of  its  business.  A  federal  dis- 
trict court  in  Oklahoma  had  briefly  consid- 
ered Sean  Sellers's  case  in  light  of  Clinton's 
newly  minted  Antiterrorism  and  Effective 
Death  Penalty  Act  (A.E.D.P.A.).  This  brave 
new  law  says  that  if  you  don't  present  your 
exculpatory  evidence  by  a  given  date,  then 
you  are  too  late,  mate.  However,  it  wasn't 
this  provision  that  doomed  the  appeal  or 
its  successor  pleas  in  higher  courts.  The 
"controlling  legal  authority"  here  is  the  de- 
cision of  the  Rehnquist  Supreme  Court  in 
1993,  known  as  Herrera  v.  Collins,  where  it 
was  baldly  stated  that  the  execution  of  an 
innocent  person  is  not  necessarily  a  viola- 
tion of  federal  constitutional  protections. 
This  February,  Sellers  was  led  out  of  his 
cell  and  put  down  like  a  diseased  animal. 

I  rticle  6(5)  of  the  International  Cove- 

II  nant  on  Civil  and  Political  Rights  states 
/ 1  that  the  "sentence  of  death  shall  not  be 
imposed  for  crimes  committed  by  persons 
below  eighteen  years  of  age."  The  United 
Nations  Convention  on  the  Rights  of  the 
Child  makes  the  same  stipulation.  So  does 
the  American  Convention  on  Human 
Rights.  The  United  States  has  signed  the 
first  and  third  of  these  treaties,  while  re- 
serving the  right  to  execute  any  person  ex- 
cept a  pregnant  woman  (presumably  out 


nunnn 


LONE  STAR  HATE 
Joseph  John  Cannon,  a  brain-damaged  drug 

addict,  was  arrested  for  murder  in  1977 

at  the  age  of  17.  Last  April  he  was  executed 

by  lethal  injection  in  Huntsville,  Texas. 


of  deference  to  the  natural  right  of  children 
rather  than  mothers).  It  is  one  of  only  two 
nations  that  have  yet  to  ratify  the  U.N. 
Convention  on  the  Rights  of  the  Child.  The 
other  nonsignatory  is  Somalia,  for  reasons 
you  probably  don't  want  to  think  about. 
Even  Iran  and  Saudi  Arabia  have  ratified 
the  U.N.  Convention.  So  astoundingly  at 
variance  with  the  international  community 
is  the  position  of  the  American  state  that 
in  1997  the  U.N.  Commission  on  Human 
Rights  asked  its  special  rapporteur  to  visit 
this  country,  to  seek  meetings  with  high 
officials,  and  to  report  back.  At  once,  there 
was  a  titanic  outcry  from  Senator  Jesse 
Helms  and  others.  What  is  this?  We  mon- 
itor other  people's  violations.  How  dare  you 
ask  to  inspect  ours? 

Adults  sentenced  to  death  in  this  coun- 
try are  almost  always  vicious  creeps,  piti- 
able failures,  or  innocent  losers.  (Recall 
the  instance  of  Anthony  Porter,  freed  from 
17  years  on  death  row  this  February  after 
a  Northwestern  University  journalism  class 
did  a  project  on  his  case  by  pure  chance 
and  discovered  what  the  prosecutors  and 
the  judges  had  not:  that  he  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  committed  the  double  murder. 
For  one  thing,  the  more  plausible  suspect 
confessed  to  the  crime,  the  sort  of  fact  a 
good  prosecutor  is  trained  never  to  over- 
look. Mr.  Porter  has  an  I.Q.  of  51  and  is, 
in  his  way,  a  child  also.)  But  the  children 
condemned  to  death  are  losers  in  a  catego- 
ry all  their  own.  A  decade  ago,  Tlie  Amer- 
ican Journal  of  Psychiatry  published  an  in- 
vestigation, using  a  sample  of  four  states, 
that  covered  juveniles  on  hold  for  exe- 
cution. There  were  14  of  them.  Only  two 
of  these  had  I.Q.  scores  higher  than  90. 


I'.very  one  of  them  had  suf- 
leied  severe  head  trauma  dur- 
ing childhood.  All  had  deep 
psychiatric  problems;  only  two 
had  managed  to  grow  up  with- 
out extreme  physical  or  sexual 
abuse,  and  five  of  them  had 
undergone  this  at  the  hands  of 
family  members.  Only  five  of 
them  had  been  evaluated  by 
psychiatrists  before  standing  tri- 
al. (In  case  you  wonder,  yes,  a 
disproportionate  number  of 
them  were  African-American.  I  don't  think 
that  Master  George  Stinney— see  above— 
would  have  been  roasted  by  the  state  of 
South  Carolina  even  in  1944  if  the  same 
hadn't  been  as  true  of  him  as  it  was  un- 
true of  his  victim.) 

I  /  ery  often,  in  fact,  these  minors  are  in 
1/  trouble— real  bad  trouble— because  they 
I  were  the  ones  too  slow  or  too  panicked 
to  flee  the  scene,  or  because  they  were 
used  by  cynical  older  criminals  as  patsies 
or  decoys.  Joseph  John  Cannon,  executed 
in  Texas  in  April  of  last  year,  was  illiterate, 
brain-damaged,  sexually  scarred,  and  heav- 
ily addicted  when  they  caught  him,  at  the 
age  of  17.  He  had  attempted  suicide  at  age 
15,  and  told  his  interviewers  that  he  could 
not  remember  anything  good  that  had  ever 
happened  to  him.  Well,  it  was  apparently 
the  job  of  the  state  of  Texas  to  make  sure 
that  this  unbroken  record  was  maintained. 
(During  his  execution  by  lethal  injection, 
which  took  place  over  the  objections  of 
His  Holiness  the  Pope,  who  was  overruled 
by  Governor  George  W  Bush,  the  needle 
"blew  out"  of  Cannon's  arm  and  the  wit- 
nesses had  to  wait  while  a  drape  was 
brought  in  and  a  "new"  vein  was  found.) 
And  the  irony  was  not  at  Joseph  John 
Cannon's  expense.  It  may  seem  odd,  to 
some  people  reading  this  column,  that  the 
United  States  joins  Yemen  and  Pakistan  in 
putting  down  its  troublesome  young,  and 
that  it  reads  lectures  on  human  rights  to 
other  countries  while  refusing  to  ratify 
treaties  which  most  civilized  societies  re- 
gard as  the  ABCs  of  law.  But  I  doubt 
Joseph  John  Cannon  would  have  seen  the 
joke.  He  probably  never  realized  that  he 
was  living  in  the  land  of  the  free  and  the 
home  of  the  brave  to  begin  with.  And 
soon  he  wasn't.  And  a  country  with  a 
positive  glut  of  lawyers  and  grief  coun- 
selors and  spiritual-awareness  artists  and 
fancy  shrinks  will  continue  to  wonder 
what  is  wrong  with  kids  these  days.  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


U  N  E     19  9  9 


NEW  YORK  LA  LONDON  TOKYO  PARIS 


/: 


\ 


r 


888.804.7527 


Business 


WILD  ON 
THESTREET.COM 

Writing  (and  investing) 
for  a  media  A-list  of  fellow 

Harvard  alumni, 
fund  manager  James  Cramer 

has  become  one  of 
Wall  Street  s  hottest  gurus. 

Now,  poised  to 

make  up  to  $50  million  in 

a  public  offering  of  his 

Web  site,  TheStreet.com, 

he  has  been  warring  fiercely 

with  his  partner  and  mentor, 

New  Republic  owner 

Martin  Peretz 

BY  SUZANNA  ANDREWS 


On  March    16,    feme!  <  lamer 
posted  ,i  long  and  rambling 
piece  on  Slate,  the  popular 
Interne!  magazine,  which  of- 
fered the  first  public  hint  at 
the  immensity  of  his  anger.  In 
the  article,  entitled  "A  Mes- 
sage to  My  Enemies,"  Cramer 
did  not  actually  name  his  "en- 
emies," but  he  lashed  out  at 
members  of  the  media  who, 
he  wrote,  "sincerely  want  to 
see  me  fail."  He  complained  about  "the 
distorted  attacks"  against  him  and  wrote 
cryptically  about  unnamed  people  who 
"want  to  drive  a  wedge  between  my 
partners  and  me." 

That  Cramer  would  be  angry  at 
how  he  was  being  treated  by  the  me- 
dia is  a  stunning  thing.  The  reason 
anyone  with  even  a  passing  interest 
in  the  stock  market  has  heard  of 
Cramer  is  that  the  man  is  a  master 
at   making   the   media   work  for 
him.  A  regular  guest  on  CNBC's 
hugely  successful  morning  stock- 
market  talk  show,  Squawk  Box, 
Cramer  has  also  appeared  fre- 
quently on  Good  Morning  Amer- 
ica. He  has  been  interviewed 
on  Charlie  Rose  and  may  be 
the  only  Wall  Street  hedge- 
fund  manager  to  have  been  a 


RAGING  BULL 

Cramer  mans  the  phone  at 

the  New  York  offices  of  Cramer, 

Berkowitz  &  Co.,  June  4,  1997. 


gueil  on  Hill  Maher's  satirical  late-night 
program,  Politically  Incorrect.  Cramer's 
columns  appear  in  Time  magazine  and 

The  New  York  Observer.  And  his  byline 
on  articles  about  such  subjects  as  hedg- 
ing strategies,  the  mysteries  of  short  sell- 
ing, the  state  of  tech  stocks,  and  what  ad- 
vice his  wife,  Karen,  whom  he  refers  to 
as  "the  Trading  Goddess,"  is  giving  him 
has  appeared  often  in  New  York  maga- 
zine. The  New  Republic,  SmartMoney, 
Brill's  Content,  and  GQ. 

At  44,  Cramer  has  become  one  of  the 
hottest  stock-market  gurus  in  the  country, 
and  it  isn't  because  he  is  a  big  player  on 
Wall  Street.  Cramer,  Berkowitz  &  Co., 
the  $265  million  hedge  fund  he  manages, 
is  dwarfed  by  far  better-known  funds, 
such  as  Paul  Tudor  Jones's  Tudor  Invest- 
ments Corporation,  which  manages  $3 
billion  in  assets,  Julian  Robertson's  $14 
billion  Tiger  Management,  and  George 
Soros's  $7.3  billion  Quantum  Fund.  And 
while  Cramer's  reported  record  of  beating 
the  market  pretty  consistently  in  the  last 
10  years  is  impressive,  Warren  Buffett  has 
done  that  for  more  than  40  years.  What 
makes  Cramer  stand  out  is  that  he  has 
been  willing  to  talk  and  write  prolifically 
about  the  stock  market  and  that  the  me- 
dia love  what  he  has  to  say  and  how  he 
says  it. 

"He's  a  better  reporter  and  writer  than 
any  money  manager,  and  he's  a  better 
money  manager  than  any  writer,"  says 
Jonathan  Alter,  a  Newsweek  colum- 
nist and  a  correspondent  for  NBC 
News,  and  also  a  friend  of  Cra- 
mer's since  their  days  at  Har- 
vard. "Jim's  by  far  the  best;  he 
I  really  knows  what  he's  talking 
about,  and  he  can  write,"  says 
Steve  Brill,  chairman  and  edi- 
tor in  chief  of  Brill's  Content. 
"He's  like  the  Martha  Stewart 
of  personal  finance,  a  great 
doer  and  a  great 
explainer,"  says 


VERSACE 


accessories 


Business 


Steven  Swartz,  the  editoi  in  chiel  oi 
SmartMoney 

Like  no  other  Wall  Street  personality 
today,  Cramer  has  become  something  of 
a  media  sin  celebrated  in  magazine  and 
newspapei  articles  that  have  referred  to 
his  "irrepressible  brilliance"  and  chroni- 
cled everything  from  his  40th-hirlhday 
party  at  Gallagher's  steak  house  in  Man- 
hattan to  his  frenetic,  19-hour  workdays. 
Nearly  three  years  ago,  when  Cramer  and 
Ins  old  friend  and  mentor,  Martin  Peretz, 
the  owner  and  editor  in  chief  of  The  New 
Republic,  started  TheStreet.com,  a  finan- 
cial Web  site  for  which  Cramer  also 
writes  about  six  columns  a  day— the  ven- 
ture was  given  loving  treatment  in  the 
media.  "There  has  been  a  suspension  of 
skepticism  about  TheStreet.com  which  is 
surprising  for  the  press,"  says  an  execu- 
tive at  an  on-line  competitor.  "The  reflex- 
ive 'built  an  enormous  business'  is  bull- 
shit. It's  got  less  circulation  than  Tin?  New 
Republic: "  ( The  New  Republic  has  a  circu- 
lation of  94,500.  TheStreet.com  claims  to 
have  37,000  subscribers.) 

Any  day  now  TheStreet.com  is  sched- 
uled to  sell  shares  to  the  public  for  the 
first  time.  Little  matter  that  the  company 
has  never  made  a  dime  and  last  year  lost 
$16.3  million.  Cramer's  own  $1.5  million 
investment  in  the  start-up  and  the  options 
he  holds  could  be  worth  a  tidy  fortune, 
$50  million  by  some  estimates,  in  today's 
hyped-up,  highly  speculative  market  for 
Internet  stocks. 

So  why  would  Jim  Cramer  be  angry? 
The  day  before  his  Slate  piece  was 
posted,  Barron's  had  published  a  wit- 
ty, cutting  article  about  Cramer  by  its 
well-known  and  highly  respected  colum- 
nist Alan  Abelson,  which  was  widely 
read  and  chuckled  over  on  Wall  Street. 
"On  television,"  Abelson  wrote,  "Cra- 
mer is  an  unfailing  and  formidable 
threat  to  coherence.  In  print,  he's  a 
threat  to  objective  journalism,  since 
he's  an  unremitting  practitioner  of 
subjective  journalism,  with  only  one 
subject— himself." 

But  that  wasn't  what  was  really  both- 
ering Cramer.  What  had  really  enraged 
him,  he  says,  leaning  across  the  desk 
in  his  Wall  Street  office,  his  eyes  ice- 
cold  and  his  neck  stiff  with  anger, 
was  the  person  who  leaked  damag- 
ing information  about  his  hedge  fund 
to  Tlie  New  York  Times  in  late 
February,  the  man  who  is 
leading  "a  jihad"  against 
him.  In  a  story  pub 
lished   two   days 
after  the  Times 
announced    it 
would   invest 


$15  million  in  TheStreet.com  and  one 
day  after  the  Wei)  company's  public  of- 
fering was  reported,  it  was  revealed  that 
Cramer's  hedge  fund  had  made  a  paltry 
'  percent  return  in  1998  at  a  time  when 
the  S&P  index  had  done  29  percent.  The 
story  also  included  the  news  that  a  large 
amount  of  money  had  been  withdrawn 
from  Cramer,  Berkowitz  by  unnamed  in- 
vestors last  fall.  Cramer  is  convinced  that 
only  an  investor  in  his  fund  could  have 
leaked  this  type  of  information,  which  is 
considered  private  by  many  hedge  funds. 
And  that  investor,  he  believes,  was 
Marty  Peretz— the  best  man  at  his  wed- 
ding, his  closest  friend  for  nearly  20 
years,  the  man  who  set  him  up  in  busi- 
ness on  Wall  Street  and  who  is  still  his 
partner  in  TheStreet.com.  While  Peretz, 
59,  roundly  denies  he  betrayed  Cramer— 
"That's  complete  bullshit,"  Peretz  says- 
Cramer  does  not  believe  him.  "If  the  goal 
is  to  create  tremendous  stress  and  to  hu- 
miliate and  embarrass  me  and  then  to 
deny  that  there  was  any  involvement,  he's 
forgotten  that  I  quarterbacked  his  offense 
for  a  dozen  years,"  Cramer  says.  "I  un- 
derstand the  game  of  how  to  ruin  people, 
and  I  don't  play  it.  I  am  well  schooled, 
and  we  can  have  a  tutorial  on  what  'off 
the  record'  and  'for  background'  mean  if 
you  want  to  sabotage  someone."  The 
more  Cramer  talks  about  Peretz,  the  more 
he  can't  stop  himself.  He  cannot  under- 
stand what  made  Peretz  yank  all  his  mon- 
ey, millions  of  dollars,  out  of  Cramer's 
hedge  fund  last  fall,  a  massive  withdrawal 
that  forced  Cramer  to  take  heavy  losses 
at  the  time.  "I  think  that,  whatever  it  is, 


I've  tried  to  bury  the  hatchet  so  many 
tunes,  and  I  keep  finding  it  in  the  back  of 
my  head,"  says  Cramer. 

Those  friends  of  Cramer's  who  are  aware 
of  his  feud  with  Peretz  are  struck  most 
by  its  timing,  coming  as  it  does  on  the 
eve  of  TheStreet. corn's  public  offering. 
"They've  both  made  each  other  richer.  It's 
amazing  they're  fighting  now,"  says  one 
prominent  journalist  and  author.  "They're 
both  about  to  make  millions.  I  thought 
that  would  salve  over  any  differences,"  says 
Michael  Kinsley,  the  editor  of  Slate,  who 
is  a  friend  of  both  men  and  who  until  re- 
cently had  money  invested,  through  Pe- 
retz, in  Cramer's  hedge  fund. 

Some  friends  wonder  about  the  pres- 
sure—the publicity,  the  many  jobs,  and  the 
public  offering— on  Cramer.  "People  are 
worried  that  he's  so  manic  he's  going  to 
snap,"  says  one  journalist  who  has  known 
him  since  college.  Cramer  has  always  had 
an  edge  of  mania  about  him,  as  anyone 
who  has  seen  him  on  television  knows,  but 
these  days  he  seems  unusually  stressed.  If 
Peretz  was  the  source  of  the  New  York 
Times  leak  and  if  he  "really  wanted  to  hurt 
Jim,"  as  one  friend  of  Cramer's  puts  it,  he 
did— bringing  to  a  full  boil  the  controversy 
over  Cramer  that  has  been  simmering  ever 
since  he  began  his  rise  to  media  stardom. 
"You  see  how  badly  he  did  last  year,  it's 
pathetic.  It's  useful  to  have  that  bench- 
mark," says  one  newspaper  columnist. 
"Cramer  has  marketed  himself  very  clever- 
ly," says  a  top  business  writer.  "But  in  real- 
ity there's  very  little  there.  Look  at  his  re- 
turns—he's a  bullshitter,  the  best  around." 
"There  are  a  lot  of  people  who  dislike 
my  views  and  me.  All  I  ever  ask,"  says 
Cramer,  "is  that  there's  a  lot  of  'on 
the  one  hand,  on  the  other'  when  it 
comes  to  me,  as  opposed  to  black 
and  white.  In  other  words,  I've 
thrust  myself  into  a  controversy 
where  I  have  accumulated  a  se- 
ries of  people  who  are— as  Kins- 
ley [who  wrote  the  "Message  to 
My  Enemies"  headline  on  the 
Slate  article]  calls  them  with- 
out my  say-so— my  enemies." 
Jim  Cramer  in  person  is 
very  much  the  same  as  Jim 
Cramer  on  television.  He 
has  trouble  sitting  still.  He's 
loud— he  shouts  and  screams. 
He  can  be  outrageously  funny.  He  pouts 
when  he's  upset,  and  at  odd  moments  he 
will  burst  into  shrieks  of  laughter.  Cramer's 
operatic  behavior,  says  one  friend,  is  "just 
this  side  of  sane."  "You  wonder  if  it's  medi- 
cation he  should  be  taking  but  isn't," 
says  another,  "but  he  is  compelling." 
^  With  the  country  in  the  midst 


of  the 


CONTINLIH)     ON     PAOI      90 


JUNE     1999 


VANITY    FAIR    PROMOTION    •    EVENTS    AND    OPPORTUNITIES 


VANITY  FAIR 


Chanel  Celebrates 
an  Era  Gone  By 

ie  Chanel  Boutique  on  Rodeo  Drive  in 
;verly  Hills  hosted  an  exhibition  of 
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nlandia  martinis  were  served  as  guests 
ewed  photographs  of  the  most-talked- 
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boutique  sipping  martinis  and  predicting  the  Oscar  winners. 


Clockwise  from  top:  L  to  R: 
Harry  Hamlin,  J.  J.  Harris,  Irena 
Medavoy,  Sugar  Ray  Leonard,  and 
Jim  Caviezel;  Jennifer  Stallone  and 
Richard  Cohen;  L  to  R:  Ron  Silver, 
Catherine  de  Castelba|ac, 
Judd  Nelson,  and  Kelly  Stafford; 
Donna  Estes-Antebi; 
Rod  Stryker  and  Cheryl  Tiegs. 


NllSIIK'SS 


contini  1 1.  i  rom  p m.i  longest  running 
hull  market  in  history,  the  media  have 
scrambled  u>  feed  the  American  public's 
seeminglj  insatiable  fascination  with  the 
stock  market.  And  one  only  has  to  look  at 
the  pi  trade  ol  Wall  Street  commentators 
on  television  business  shows  today  gray- 
suited,  gray-haired  men  and  buttoned-to- 
the-neck,  hair-sprayed  women  to  under- 
stand why  Cramer  is  so  successful,  even 
as  he  deiies  easy  categorization:  He's  an 
insider  who  plays  the  outsider.  When  he 
tells  viewers  of  Squawk  Box  that  "I  own  a 
smattering  of  tech  hut  have  cut  back"  or 
that  he  owns  "a  small  amount  of"  Intel 
and  Microsoft  "but  I'm  not  shorting  these 
stocks,  I'm  not  out  of  these  stocks,"  he 
says  it  as  if  he  were  giving  you  informa- 
tion no  one  else  will.  He's  colloquial  and 
emotional.  "I'm  not  in  denial  about  Japan 
anymore,  it's  working,"  he  confesses  to  his 
audience,  sounding  like  a  guest  on  the 
Sally  Jessy  Raphael  show. 


«n  television  and  in  his  writing,  Cramer 
has  exposed  the  inner  world  of  Wall 
Street  in  a  way  few  others  have.  His 
columns— on  topics  such  as  the  "short 
squeeze"  on  AOL's  stock  in  March,  or 
how  he's  yearning  to  buy  Internet  stocks 
but  sticking  with  bonds,  or  how  he  sold 
Citigroup  and  then  had  a  heartstopping 
moment  when  the  stock  rose  before  it  fell 
again— give  all  the  flavor  of  the  trading- 
room  floor.  Cramer  will  contradict  him- 
self from  week  to  week,  or,  in  the  case  of 
his  columns  for  TheStreet.com,  daily,  but 
his  writing  is  a  road  map  into  a  trader's 
head.  He  is,  in  some  ways,  a  creature  of 
the  revolution  that  is  taking  place  in  the 
world  of  investing,  which  is  loosening 
Wall  Street's  grip  on  the  market.  If  the 
bull  market  has  drawn  millions  of  people 
into  much  more  active  investing,  the  In- 
ternet, with  its  growing  number  of 
electronic  trading  sites,  has  helped 
them  to  take  control  of  their  stock 
trading.  "Check  out  the  finance 
chat  rooms  [on  the  Internet]," 
says  David  Ignatius,  the  for- 
mer business  editor  of  The 
Washington  Post,  who  is  now 
a  columnist  for  the  pa 
per's  op-ed  page.  "They 
are  unbelievable.  It's 
like  being  in  the  midst 
of  a  giant  electronic 
gossip  mill;  the  informa- 
tion just  whirls  around  and 
the  market  in  some  of  these  little 
stocks  moves  instantly.  What  Jim  is 
doing  taps  into  this  in  a  more  sophisti- 
cated way— the  democratization  of  high- 
end  trading." 

"In  terms  of  becoming  a  media  figure, 
Jim's  sort  of  the  perfect  person  in  the 


markets,"  says  Rich. ml  Turner,  ;i  News- 
week senior  editor  who  used  to  edit  (  ia- 
mer's  column  at  New  York  111. i)-'. i/me  and 
who  ;ilso  went  to  Harvard  with  him.  "He's 
reacting  against  a  very  stuffy  business 
press  and  overly  structured  analysts  with 
their  charts.  He  just  presents  himself  as 
.1  character,  as  a  sportscaster  about  the 
iiKiikets."  Whether  he's  relating  a  brilliant 
trade  he's  made,  or  a  spectacularly  stupid 
one,  Cramer  is  always  the  star  of  his  sto- 
ries the  underdog  telling  people  what 
others  in  the  media  or  on  Wall  Street 
aren't  honest  or  experienced  enough  to 
tell.  This  we-against-them  approach  is  es- 
pecially evident  in  Cramer's  columns  for 
TheStreet.com,  which  often  veer  off  into 
rants  against  unnamed  Wall  Street  com- 
mentators who  are  more  bearish  about 
the  markets  than  he  is,  and  against  the 
business  press,  which  doesn't  really  un- 
derstand what's  happening.  When  people 
get  offended,  it  is  simply,  in  Cramer's 
mind,  evidence  of  how  wrong  they  are. 
On  one  of  his  recent  Squawk  Box  ap- 
pearances, for  example,  Cramer  suddenly 
turned  on  another  guest,  the  elderly  com- 
mentator Joe  Granville,  who  some  say 
brought  about  the  1981  stock-market  slide 
with  his  bearish  forecasts.  "What  if  you're 
wrong?"  he  barked  at  Granville.  "Do  you 
ever  say  you're  wrong?"  Cramer  seemed 
not  to  notice  how  embarrassed  Granville 
appeared  to  be  before  he  finally  lashed 
back  at  Cramer. 

"Joe  Granville  right  now  is  faxing  to  all 
of  his  people  a  memo  saying,  'I  hate  Jim 
Cramer!,'"  Cramer  tells  me  later  the  same 
day.  "What  was  the  point  of  that?  Well, 
the  point  was  that  he's  wrong."  Granville 
denies  faxing  anyone  on  the  subject  of  Jim 
Cramer  and  says  he  received  phone  calls 


"He's  a  very  good  self- 
promoter,  which  doesn't  mean 

you  should  take 
his  views 

seriously."     ! 


\  - 


and  faxes  from  people  who  couldn't  be- 
lieve the  way  (ramer  attacked  him.  But  in 
<  i. unci's  view  of  that  incident,  he  was 
most  assuredly  the  victim.  "1  called  my 
sister,"  he  says,  "and  my  sister  said,  'Jim, 
it's,  like,  on  the  one  hand  you  want  to  put 
a  no  iiuniinc,  sign  on  you,  and  on  the 
other  hand,  like,  you're  just  a  deer.  They 
go  right  after  your  ass.'  1  mean,  it's  like  a 
lot  of  times  I  feel  like  I'm  an  innocent 
where  I  just  say,  'Well,  I  said  it  because  I 
was  right.'  Like,  my  wife  will  say  to  me, 
'Jim,  why  do  you  have  all  these  problems 
with  people?'  I  always  say  the  same  thing. 
'Well,  because  I'm  right.  You  see,  I'm  not 
wrong,  I'm  right.'" 

Cramer  stands  up  and  locks  his  arms 
across  his  chest.  I  notice  his  cuff  links, 
one  red,  one  green,  with  the  word 
"Buy"  embossed  in  gold  on  one  and 
"Sell"  on  the  other.  "There  is  a  real 
truth,"  he  continues.  "I  am  trying  to 
change  business  journalism.  I've  been  try- 
ing to  change  it  now  for  a  decade.  Ac- 
countability, trying  to  help  people  control 
their  own  money,  trying  to  help  people 
be  more  informed.  Like,  there  was  this 
scene  in  The  Godfather  IT  They're  in 
Cuba  and  there's  this  guy  who  blows  him- 
self up  in  a  car  for  the  revolution,  and 
Michael  Corleone  turns  and  says,  'These 
guys  are  going  to  win.  They're  the  true 
believers,"'  Cramer  says,  cheerfully  un- 
aware that  he's  putting  words  in  Cor- 
leone's  mouth.  "I've  heard  all  the  guys 
talk  about  Tire  Godfather.  I'm  the  guy 
with  the  bomb,"  he  says,  breaking  into 
shrieks  of  wild  laughter.  "I  am  the  true 
believer.  I  am  a  true  believer." 

"Jim's  ego,"  says  one  longtime  friend, 
"has  gone  completely  out  of  control  late- 
ly." It  is  no  surprise  that  not  everyone  is 
as  impressed  with  Cramer  as  he  is  with 
himself.  On  Wall  Street,  those  who  have 
heard  of  him  (many  have  not)  look 
on  Cramer  with  raised  eyebrows. 
"He's  a  lunatic,"  says  one  prominent 
investment  banker,  laughing.  "A  very, 
very  good  self-promoter,  which  doesn't 
mean  you  should  take  his  views  serious- 
ly.  He's  entertainment,  he's  not  invest- 
ment advice." 

Although  he  has  something  of  a  cult 
following  among  readers  of  TheStreet.com, 
a  lot  of  what  Cramer  writes  and  says  flirts 
with  incoherence.  He  loves  to  write,  though. 
("It's  a  total  turn-on,"  he  screams,  some- 
how managing  to  throw  his  entire  body 
across  his  desk.  "I  love  it,  man!  I  love  it!" 
he  says,  pounding  the  desk  with 
^  his  fists.)  He  writes  on  a  lap- 
top in  his  limousine  on 
the  way  to  work  at  4:30 
in  the  morning  and 
on   his   ride   home. 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


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business 


during  breaks  in  ins  trading  day,  and  late 
at  night  imni  home.  Increasingly,  people 
say,  ii  shows  "It  used  to  be  run  to  read 

his  columns,"  says  a  in aga/inc  writer  "But 
now  lies  writing  so  on-the-lly  he's  become 
a  hack 

"His  only  redeeming  feature  is  that  he 
worships  his  wife,"  says  another  Wall 
Street  banker,  referring  to  Karen  Cramer, 
a  former  trader  who  is  now  raising  the 
couple's  two  young  daughters.  "You  read 
his  columns  and  you're  thinking:  What  is 
this  about?  And  then  you  realize.  Oh, 
this  is  about  this  deep  need  to  prove 
himself.  The  narcissism  is  so  prevalent. 
How  did  this  guy  get  to  be  so  visible?" 


H 


(II  arvard  in  the  70s,  it  is  the  new  old-boy 
network,"  says  one  journalist.  "It's  sort 
of  scary,  all  these  media  guys  who 
were  all  there  at  the  same  time."  The  list 
does  indeed  read  like  some  kind  of  yup- 
pie media  Trilateral  Commission:  Walter 
Isaacson,  the  managing  editor  of  Time, 
was  Harvard  '74;  Mark  Whitaker,  the  edi- 
tor of  Newsweek,  graduated  in  1979;  Peter 
Kaplan,  editor  of  The  New  York  Observer, 
Kurt  Andersen,  the  former  editor  of  New 
York  magazine,  and  Nicholas  Lemann,  a 
staff  writer  at  Tlie  New  Yorker,  all  graduated 
in  1976;  Michael  Kinsley  and  James  Fal- 
lows, former  editor  of  U.S  News  &  World 
Report,  were  the  class  of  1972  and  1970 
respectively.  "Call  it  the  Trilateral  Com- 
mission, it's  fair,"  says  New  York  Observer 
columnist  Philip  Weiss,  who  graduated 
from  Harvard  in  1976.  "And  for  a  time 
Jim  Cramer  ran  it." 

Cramer  arrived  at  Harvard  in  1973.  Un- 
like most  of  the  men  who  were  to  become 
his  friends,  he  was  a  scholarship  student 
from  a  middle-class  suburb  outside  Phila- 
delphia. "It  was  like  Levittown,"  a  Har- 
vard friend  says.  Cramer's  father  helped 
run  a  package-making  business;  his  moth- 
er was  an  artist.  "Harvard  was  completely 
outside  the  realm  Jim  grew  up  in.  He 
seemed  completely  shy  and  naive  and 
vulnerable,"  recalls  Nicholas 
Lemann,  who  was  in  the  class 
ahead  of  Cramer.  "Jim,  for  exam 
pie,  would  get  a  crush  on  a  girl— a 
huge  crush.  And  you'd  say,  'Jim, 
where  are  you  going  to  take  her?' 
'To  the  all-you-can-eat  Sunday 
brunch  at  the  Marriott,'  he'd 
say  with  great  pride.  Har- 
vard was  a  place  where  if 
you  wanted  to  get  laid  you 
bought  a  pack  of  Gauloises 
and  went  to  a  Godard  retro- 
spective," Lemann  says.  "Jim 
wasn't  Wall  Streety  at  Harvard. 
He  was  a  big  opera  and  classical 
music  fan,  and  he  was  very  inter- 
ested in  politics." 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


More  than  anything,  Cramer  was  inter- 
ested in  journalism.  In  his  freshman  year, 
he  passed  the  rigorous  tryouts  and  was 
invited  to  become  a  reporter  fol  The  Har- 
vard Crimson,  Harvard's  famed  student 
newspaper.  Intense,  driven,  needing  only 
three  hours  of  sleep  a  night,  he  turned 
out  to  be  one  of  the  paper's  most  prolific 
reporters.  "He  was  a  very  good  reporter, 
very  much  congruent  with  what  he  is  to- 
day. He  just  worked  so  hard.  He  worked 
more  hours  than  anyone  else,"  recalls 
Lemann,  who  was  president  of  the  Crim- 
son in  1975.  "It  was  more  that  than  the 
elegance  of  the  prose  or  the  quality  of 
the  investigative  reporting.  It  was  sheer 
productivity." 

"He  loved  journalism,"  says  Weiss, 
who  in  1975  was  among  those  who  sup- 
ported Cramer's  candidacy  for  Crimson 
president.  "It  was  a  pitched  battle,"  Weiss 
says,  "between  very  different  forces": 
Cramer,  the  scholarship  boy,  ran  as  a 
champion  of  the  news  side  against  the 
wealthy,  politically  connected,  social- 
climbing  Eric  Breindel,  who  would  be- 
come editorial-page  editor  of  the  New 
York  Post  before  his  death  last  year.  Cra- 
mer won  by  one  vote. 

The  1975  election— which  pitted  such 
Cramer  supporters  as  Lemann  and  Weiss 
against  Breindel  backers  like  Peter  Kap- 
lan—is remembered  vividly  24  years  later 
by  the  men  involved  as  being  as  hard- 
fought  as  the  one  in  which  David  Hal- 
berstam  beat  out  J.  Anthony  Lukas  for 
managing  editor  in  1953.  Over  the  years, 
the  story  of  the  1975  election  has  been 
told  and  retold,  and  it  has  taken  the 
shape  of  a  class  struggle,  which  bothers 
Cramer.  "My  father  had  a  good  job,"  he 
says.  "I  don't  mean  this  as  a  slur  to  peo- 
ple who  live  in  trailer  parks,  but  that's 
what  my  father  says:  'What?  Did  you 
grow  up  in  Cheltenham  [an  affluent 
area]?'  I  think  there  are  some  people  who 


"You  wonder  if  it's  medication 
he  should  be 
1  ing  but 


are  overly  willing  to  portray  class  conflict 
where  I  don't  feel  there  was  any." 

I  Iter  Harvard,  Cramer  got  a  job  "operat- 

II  ing  the  Xerox  machine  and  photocopy- 
/ 1  ing  things,"  he  says,  at  the  Congres- 
sional Quarterly  in  Washington.  He  then 
moved  to  Florida,  where  he  was  a  re- 
porter for  the  Tallahassee  Democrat.  He 
covered  the  trial  of  the  serial  killer  Ted 
Bundy.  Cramer  was,  he  says,  the  first  re- 
porter on  the  scene  of  the  Chi  Omega 
murders,  involving  the  Florida  State  Uni- 
versity sorority  girls  who  were  among 
Bundy 's  final  victims.  "I  was  next  door  to 
the  sorority  house,  that's  where  I  lived.  I 
was  there,  everywhere,  man,"  Cramer 
says.  "I  was  there  for  the  great  Youngs- 
town  train  wreck.  I  happened  to  be  in  a 
disco  nearby.  I  had  a  series  of  national 
page-one  stories  in  Tallahassee.  That's 
why  they  wanted  me  at  the  [now  defunct] 
Los  Angeles  Herald  Examiner.  Yeah,  I  was 
a  good  reporter,  babe." 

Cramer,  by  all  accounts,  was  a  very 
good  reporter,  but  his  life  began  to  fall 
apart  after  he  moved  to  Los  Angeles.  He 
was  stalked,  he  says:  "I  couldn't  go  back  to 
my  place,  because  there  was  someone  stay- 
ing at  my  place  by  day.  They  were  in  my 
apartment  every  day.  I  came  back  and  said, 
'My  little  change  pile  is  gone.'  Then  the  next 
day  I  come  back  and  there's  a  little  open 
can  of  tuna. ...  I  called  the  police  three 
times.  The  police  come  out.  Then  every- 
thing starts  disappearing,  and  my  bathroom 
gets  trashed.  I  get  a  gun.  I  had  the  cops 
come  out  about  seven  times.  Lieutenant 
Springer  finally  said  to  me,  'What  do  you 
think  this  is,  KojakT  " 

Penniless,  and  afraid,  Cramer  lived  in 
his  car  for  several  months.  When  Steve 
Brill  phoned  him  at  the  suggestion  of  sev- 
eral of  Cramer's  Harvard  friends  to  offer 
him  a  job  at  The  American  Lawyer,  Cra- 
mer was  fighting  off  creditors.  Brill,  he 
says,  paid  for  his  plane  ticket  to  New 
York.  "I  was  a  good  reporter,  but  I  couldn't 
make  any  money,"  Cramer  says.  "In  the 
end,  I  really  didn't  have  any 
money;  it  was  like  a  ma- 
jor reclamation  project  to 
get  my  life  together."  Cramer 
worked  for  Brill  at  The  Ameri- 
can Lawyer  until  1981,  when  he 
returned  to  Harvard  for  law  school. 
"It  was  very  important  to  Jim's 
parents  that  he  go  to  law  school," 
Lemann  recalls.  "I  think  he  makes  jour- 
nalism sound  rougher  as  a  field  to  be  in 
than  it  really  is.  It's  as  though  he  was  look- 
ing for  an  excuse  to  leave  journalism."  Af- 
ter law  school,  Cramer  went  to  work  on 
Wall  Street,  at  Goldman,  Sachs,  where 
he  became  briefly  infamous  for  tell- 
ng  The  New  York  Times,  "There 

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isn't  anything  1  see  in  .1  store  that  I  ( an  1 
buy."  "When  Jim  interviewed  at  Gold- 
man." 1 1)  ■  Phil  Weiss  tl  .  .iskcil  him, 
wii.it  stink  ilo  you  like?    \nd  he  said 

I  won  h  cause  it  was  gigantic,  energetic, 
and  undervalued.  1  hat's  Jim.  lie  lias  a 
little  hit  ol  a  chip  on  his  shoulder.  Like 
his  fathet  Ik's  very,  very  smart,  and  he 
felt  undervalued."  Weiss  remembers  stand- 
ing with  Cramer  at  Nicholas  l.emann's 
wedding  16  years  ago  as  Cramer  looked 
around  the  room,  turned  to  Weiss,  and 
said,  "These  are  all  $30,000-a-year  men." 
Says  Weiss  today,  "It  was  out  of  pride,  a 
contemptuousness  about  journalists.  I 
don't  think  it's  a  war  for  his  soul,  al- 
though it's  a  tormented  soul,  but  there  are 
things  he  loves  about  journalism." 

"My  mom  always  wanted  me  to  be  a 
writer,"  Cramer  says,  blinking  back  tears. 
"She  wanted  me  to  be  a  writer  after  I 
made  some  money.  She  wanted  me  to  do 
something  other  than  make  rich  people 
richer." 

Cramer's  friendship  with  Marty  Peretz 
began  when  Cramer  was  at  Harvard 
Law  School.  "All  the  silly  little  stories 
in  the  press  about  how  we  met  are  true," 
Peretz  says  today.  The  two  men  were  in- 
troduced by  Michael  Kinsley,  who  then 
worked  at  The  New  Republic  and  was  its 
editor  from  1979  to  1981  and  1985  to  1989. 
Kinsley  suggested  that  Peretz  get  Cramer 
to  do  a  book  review.  By  this  time  Cramer 
had  become  obsessed  with  the  stock  mar- 
ket, and  he  was  putting  stock  tips  on  his 
answering  machine.  Peretz  listened  to  those, 
followed  up  on  a  couple  of  them,  and 
made  a  profit.  After  they  became  friends, 
Peretz  gave  Cramer  $500,000  to  invest  on 
his  behalf.  Friends  of  both  men  say  that 
their  relationship  was,  at  root,  based  on 
their  mutual  fascination  with  money  and 
the  markets.  "Jim  and  I,"  Peretz  says 
dryly,  "used  to  provoke  each  other 
in  stimulating  ways." 

It  was  Peretz,  who  is  mar- 
ried to  an  heiress  to  the 
Singer  sewing-machine  for- 
tune, who  set  Cramer  up  in 
the  hedge-fund  business.  He 
not  only  steered  his  wealthy 
friends,  such  as  computer  en- 
trepreneur   Max    Palevsky,    to 
Cramer,  but  also  himself  invest- 
ed millions  of  dollars  in  Cramer's 
new  company.  Part  of  that  money 
was   a   fund,   Crimson   Invest- 
ments,  in   which    Peretz   had 
pooled  small  sums  from  friends 
of  his,  people  who  didn't  have 
the  $250,000  to  $1  million 
generally  considered  the  mini- 
mum for  high-risk,  high-returns 
hedge-fund  investing.  Some  o 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


those  in  the  (iiinson  fund  weie  Cramer's 

friends  from  Harvard,  including  Michael 

Kinsley  and  Jonathan  Alter.  Others  were 

New  Republic  editors  such  as  Fred  Haines. 
(links  Krauthammer,  and  Leon  Wiesel- 
tiei.  "It  was  one  of  those  little  perks  lor 
working  at  The  New  Republic"  says  one 
man.  "You  got  to  invest  with  Cramer." 
Other  journalists  who  have  money  in- 
vested with  him  include  Kurt  Andersen, 
Steve  Brill,  and  the  writer  James  Stewart, 
who  became  a  close  friend  of  Cramer's 
when  they  worked  together  at  The  Ameri- 
can Lawyer.  But  these  men  weren't  part 
of  the  pool  Peretz  put  together.  Cramer 
brought  them  in  on  his  own  later. 

The  relationship  between  Peretz  and  Cra- 
mer was  "like  a  father-and-son  thing," 
says  one  friend  of  Cramer's.  "Marty 
paid  all  of  Eric  Breindel's  psychiatry  bills 
when  he  was  dealing  with  his  heroin  ad- 
diction," says  one  friend  of  Peretz's.  "The 
most  important  thing  in  Marty's  life  is  loy- 
alty. He  is  extremely  loyal  and  generous  to 
a  small  circle  of  younger  people,  and  Cra- 
mer was  one  of  those."  At  times  Cramer 
and  Peretz  talked  every  day.  "It  was  the 
kind  of  thing  that's  bound  to  cool  off," 
says  a  mutual  friend.  "You  can't  sustain 
relationships  that  intense." 

It  was  largely  through  Peretz  that  Cra- 
mer kept  one  foot  in  journalism.  Cramer 
wrote  book  reviews,  opinion  pieces,  and 
cover  stories  for  The  New  Republic  while 
he  worked  on  Wall  Street.  In  1988,  Cra- 
mer also  returned  to  writing  for  Steve 
Brill,  with  a  financial  column  for  Brill's 
Manhattan  Lawyer.  In  1991,  when  Jim 
Stewart,  then  page-one  editor  at  The  Wall 
Street  Journal,  was  helping  to  start  Smart- 
Money,  the  personal-finance  magazine 
that  is  a  joint  venture  between  Dow  Jones 


and  Hearst,  he  got  Cramer  involved  in 
the  project.  "Jim  was  very  much  a  part 
ol  the  inspiration  lor  SmartMoney,"  says 
Stewart.  "He  said  all  these  magazines  are 
about  helping  rich  people  keep  their 
money,  instead  of  for  helping  people 
make  money."  It  was  that  editorial  ap- 
proach which  eventually  proved  the  key 
to  SmartMoney's  success. 

n  February  1995,  The  Washington  Post 

ran  a  front-page  story  questioning  Cra- 
mer's ethics.  The  article  claimed  that  his 
hedge  fund  had  made  $2.5  million  when  a 
favorable  mention  in  one  of  his  columns 
for  SmartMoney  triggered  a  run-up  in  the 
stock  prices  of  three  small  companies  in 
his  portfolio.  The  allegation  was  a  serious 
one:  by  some  oversight,  SmartMoney's  edi- 
tors had  not  attached  the  usual  disclosure 
line  reminding  readers  that  Cramer  owned 
some  of  the  stocks  he  was  writing  about— 
in  this  case,  companies  in  which  Cramer's 
fund  was  a  major  shareholder.  Cramer  was 
devastated,  but  also  enraged,  by  the  storm 
of  criticism  that  followed  in  the  press.  "He 
called  me  up,  and  I've  never  heard  such 
vitriol  from  anyone.  It  was  unbelievable,  he 
was  really  nasty,"  recalls  James  Glassman, 
the  columnist  and  former  New  Republic 
publisher,  after  he  wrote  a  scathing  op-ed 
article  in  Tlie  Washington  Post  questioning 
whether  Cramer  should  be  allowed  to  play 
journalist,  given  the  huge  potential  for  con- 
flicts of  interest.  Cramer  insisted  that  he 
would  not  sell  the  stocks  of  the  three  com- 
panies right  away,  but  that  prompted  more 
questions.  Just  who  was  benefiting  from 
Cramer's  compulsion  to  write?  His  read- 
ers? His  investors  (who  forfeited  the  quick 
profit  they  could  have  taken  with  the  rise 
in  the  prices  of  those  stocks)?  Or  Cramer? 
"He  contends  he  provides  insights  only  a 
trader  could  do,  that  a  journalist  couldn't," 
says  Glassman,  "and  maybe  he's  right,  but 
it's  problematic."  A  business  reporter  puts 
it  more  harshly:  "He's  a  goddamn  walking 
conflict  of  interest."  Cramer,  of  course, 
disagrees.  "I  have  the  most  strict  disclo- 
sure rules  of  anyone  in  the  business,"  he 
says.  "I  admit  to  wearing  two  hats.  I  am 
a  commentator,  not  a  journalist,  who  is 
trying  to  explain  what  he  sees.  I  don't 
recommend  stocks.  I  try  to  teach 
people  the  hows  and  whys  of  invest- 
ing. One  day  of  reading  my  col- 
umns will  tell  you  that." 

Over  the  years,  Cramer  has  had 
some  very  influential  defenders.  Joe 
Nocera,  a  friend  since  Cra- 
mer's days  in  Washington, 
wrote  a  strongly  worded 
article  in  Time  magazine 
supporting  Cramer  in 
the  SmartMoney  con- 
troversy. Weiss  con- 

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Observei  aboul  Cramer's  surprise  40th- 
birthdaj  party,  which  took  place  the  night 
the  Washington  Post  article  ran.  ( 'rushed 
by  the  allegations  thai  had  been  made 
against  him,  Cramer  was  so  overwhelmed 
when  he  arrived  at  Gallagher's  steak 
house  and  found  about  100  supporters 
and  friends  gathered  that  he  sobbed  and 
laughed  and  vomited  the  entire  night. 
Cramer  had  made  not  just  friends  over 
the  years,  he  had  made  very  devoted 
friends.  "A  group  of  people  came  out  of 
The  C  'rimson  and  have  been  really  com- 
petitive over  the  years.  They've  carried  it 
into  life,"  says  Weiss,  who  insists  that 
Cramer  is  different.  Weiss  was  touched, 
for  example,  when  Cramer  bought  30 
copies  of  Weiss's  1995  novel,  Cock-a- 
doodle-doo,  and  handed  them  out  to  his 
employees.  "If  something  good  happens 
to  a  friend,  Jim  celebrates  it.  No  one  else 
did  that  for  me." 

"He's  smart,  he's  loyal,  and  he's  enter- 
taining," says  Kurt  Andersen,  a  New  York- 
er columnist.  "He  says  whatever  he  thinks, 
which  is  so  refreshing." 

"My  wife  asks  me  why  I  like  Jim  so 
much.  It's  a  guy  thing,  but  not  in  the  tra- 
ditional way;  it's  not  'We  both  love  golf,'" 
says  one  prominent  columnist.  "It's  about 
journalism.  Journalists  like  characters  that 
stick  out,  and  Jim  is  the  guy  who  sticks 
out.  He's  all  elbows.  You  can  dine  out  on 
Jim.  And  another  part  of  it  is  'Gee,  some- 
body like  us  is  worth  all  this  money.'  Jim 
sort  of  straddles  two  worlds  that  envy 
each  other." 

I  ike  Nocera  and  Weiss,  most  of  Cra- 
mer's friends  were  appalled  that  any- 
one  would   question   his   ethics. 
Some  of  them  blamed  the  outcry  on 
envy.  "A  lot  of  business  journalists  are 
very  threatened  by  Jim,"  says  one  friend. 
Just  why  they  would  be,  no  one  could 
really  explain.  Many  feel  Cramer  should 
have   known   better   than   to   write   the 
SmartMoney  article,  disclosure  or  no  dis- 
closure. "I  believe  in  Jim's  ethics  1,000 
percent,"  says  SmartMoney'^  editor,  Steve 
Swartz.  "But  we  all  made  a  mistake.  We 
shouldn't  have  published  the  column,  and 
Jim  shouldn't  have  written  it."  An  S.E.C. 
investigation  into  the  SmartMoney  epi- 
sode eventually  cleared  Cramer  of 
any  wrongdoing.  He  left  Smart- 
Money and  was  hired 
Andersen  to  write  a  col 
umn  for  New  York  mag 
azine,  a  job  which  gave 
Cramer  mainstream 
visibility  for  the  first 
time.  When  Ander- 
sen was  forced  out 
of  New  York  in  1996, 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


J 


Cramer  left  with  him  oul  of  loyalty.  At 

Andersen's  urging.  Wallet   Isaacson  hired 

<  i  Mini  to  write  a  column  foi  Time  and 

Peter  Kaplan  gave  him  one  at  The  New 
York  Observer. 

Despite  his  growing  success,  Cramer 
did  QOl  seem  to  get  over  his  anger  about 
what  had  happened  to  him  at  Smart- 
Money. And  what  he  did  about  it  or  what 
some  people  believe  he  did  about  it— once 
again  raised  suspicions  about  how  he  was 
using  his  unusual  influence.  In  1997, 
Cramer's  hedge  fund  bought  1.1  million 
shares  of  Dow  Jones,  the  company  that 
co-owns  SmartMoney.  At  that  time,  Dow 
Jones's  management  was  under  attack  by 
prominent  dissident  shareholders  includ- 
ing some  members  of  the  company's 
founding  family  and  the  investor  Michael 
Price— who  wanted  management  to  sell  or 
shut  down  Telerate,  Dow  Jones's  money- 
losing  financial-information  operation.  Cra- 
mer told  the  press  that  he  had  bought  into 
Dow  Jones  because  he  wanted  to  join  the 
fight  to  save  it  from  its  management.  With 
great  flourish  he  announced  to  reporters 
that  he  was  doing  this  because  he  cared 
deeply  about  journalism  and  about  the 
survival  and  integrity  of  a  newspaper  as 
great  as  The  Wall  Street  Journal,  which 
Dow  Jones  owns.  He  criticized  the  com- 
pany's management  repeatedly  in  the  me- 
dia. Eventually,  he  sold  his  shares  for  a 
$4  million  profit,  claiming  that  if  Dow 
Jones  wasn't  going  to  listen  to  his  plan 
for  saving  the  company,  it  wasn't  worth 
his  time  to  stick  around. 

But  Cramer,  some  people  believe,  had 
no  interest  in  how  Dow  Jones  was  being 
managed.  He  was  angry, 


"Every  one  of  us  has  been  on 

U"  other  end  of 


some  say,  because  Dow  Jones  had  not 
paid  all  the  legal  bills  he'd  incurred  as  a 
result  ol  the  S.E.C.'s  investigation  into 
his  SmartMoney  column.  (Cramer  denies 
this  )  He  "felt  betrayed,"  as  one  friend 
puts  it,  and  wanted  revenge  for  the  way 
Dow  Jones's  management  had  treated 
him.  "He  thought  they  [had  acted]  like  he 
was  a  criminal.  He  was  beside  himself 
over  that  because  of  things  that  are  deep- 
seated  in  his  nature.  He  was  upset  they 
didn't  trust  him." 

Did  Cramer  do  it  for  the  publicity,  as 
some  suggest?  Did  he  merely  see  an  op- 
portunity to  make  a  profit?  No  one  but 
Cramer  knows  exactly  why  he  stalked 
Dow  Jones.  Today  he  says,  "I  have  to  ad- 
mit I  was  too  harsh  about  Dow  Jones. 
Screwed  this  one  up." 


screaming 
tirade  from  Jim." 


im  can  be  a  hard  guy  to  be  around. 
He's  very  mercurial.  Every  one  of  us 
has  been  on  the  other  end  of  a  scream- 
ing tirade  from  Jim,"  says  one  friend.  It 
happens,  says  this  friend,  "whenever  you 
disagree  with  him."  When  asked  what 
makes  Cramer  angry,  Nicholas  Lemann 
pauses  for  a  moment  and  then  laughs. 
"Everything,"  he  says.  "I  think  I'm  one  of 
the  few  people  that  Jim  hasn't  gotten  into 
a  fight  with  at  some  point.  He's  a  man 
who  loves  deeply  and  hurts  easily.  It's  a 
roller-coaster  ride  to  be  his  friend— he's 
like  the  diva  in  the  dressing  room.  He 
lives  life  at  a  very  high  emotional  pitch." 
Cramer,  says  another  friend,  "will  kill  for 
you  and  he  will  kill  you." 

According  to  his  friends,  Cramer 
began  to  have  problems  with  Marty  Pe- 
retz  almost  from  the  day  that  the  two 
men  went  into  business  together  on 
TheStreet.com.  To  finance  the 
first  phase  of  their  new  venture, 
each  man  agreed  to  put  up 
$1.5  million.  Within  months, 
however,  Cramer  began  to 
complain  to  friends  that 
Peretz  wasn't  contribut- 
ing his  share  of  the 
money.  "There  was 
a  structure  of  when 
they  had  to  put  money 
up,"  says  a  friend  of  Cra- 
mer's. "Jim  said  he  had  to 
put  up  Marty's  share."  Cramer, 
his  friends  say,  also  began  to  feel 
that  he  was  doing  all  the  work  for 
TheStreet.com— writing  columns  for  it, 
trying  to  get  publicity  for  it,  managing  it. 
He   told   people   that    he   had   asked 
Peretz  for  more  equity  in  the  compa- 
ny and  that   Peretz  had   refused. 
And  he  complained  that  Peretz 
would   not   provide  additional 
funds  needed  for  an  ad  cam- 
paign on  the  grounds  that 

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Cramei  could  use  his  visibility  to  get  thai 
publicity  On  top  of  all  that,  says  one 
friend  ol  Cramei  s,  "Marty  was,  in  Jim's 
view,  meddling  in  a  completely  clueless, 
irritating,  useless  waj 

I  he  >torj  from  Peretz's  friends,  how- 
ever,  is  dramatically  different,  Peretz, 
they  say.  not  only  came  up  with  his  mon- 
c\  mi  time,  but  also  agreed  to  advance 
money  to  lheStreet.com.  "lor  ahout 
lour  or  five  months,-'  says  one  friend, 
"Marty  was  carrying  Jim."  Although 
friends  advised  against  it,  Peretz,  they 
say,  also  gave  in  to  Cramer's  demand  for 
more  stock,  turning  over  to  Cramer  some 
500,000  additional  shares.  "He  did  it  be- 
cause he  was  trying  to  salvage  things.  He 
really  wanted  TheStreet  to  succeed,"  says 
a  friend  of  Peretz's. 

hat  both  sides  agree  on  is  that  more 
than  a  year  ago  Peretz  was  sent 
some  E-mails  that  Cramer  had  writ- 
ten to  an  employee  at  TheStreet.com,  who 
had  just  been  fired  by  Cramer.  Unhappy 
about  the  negotiations  over  his  severance 
payment,  this  employee  forwarded  to 
Peretz  messages  in  which  Cramer  had 
referred  rudely  to  Peretz's  role  in  The- 
Street.com.  "They  were  extremely  un- 
flattering," Peretz  says.  "I  want  to  dilute 
[Peretz's  share  of  TheStreet]  without  di- 
luting me,"  Cramer  wrote  in  one  E-mail. 
"This  will  be  a  crucial  break  in  our  rela- 
tionship, but  without  it,  I  will  forever  be 
blasting  him  behind  his  back."  Peretz, 
Cramer  wrote  in  a  second  E-mail,  "has 
no  standing"  at  TheStreet;  "MP's  judg- 
ment should  not  come  into  play."  Cramer 
says  that  he  was  devastated,  that  he  apol- 
ogized repeatedly  and  profusely,  but 
that  Peretz  rebuffed  him. 

According  to  Peretz,  what  real 
ly  happened  was  quite  different. 
He  says  he  was  eager  to  patch 
things  up.   "We  had  two  or 
three  meetings,  always  at  my 
initiative,  sometimes  involv 
ing  his  tears,"  he  recalls. 
"And   we   turned    over   a 
new  leaf,  but  somehow  the 
pages  of  the  book  got  turned 
back  in  the  space  of  a  week 
each  time." 

By  September,  the  tension  had 
become  unbearable.  The  two  men 
spoke  only  at  TheStreet.com  board 
meetings.   It   was  around  this  time, 
Cramer  believes,  that  Peretz  began  bac 
mouthing  him  to  investors  in  his  hedge 
fund  and  urging  them  to  pull  their 
money  out.  Like  many  other  hedge 
funds  buffeted  by  the  slide  in  tech 
stocks,  Asia's  and  Russia's  prob- 
lems, and  the  near  collapse  of    . 
Long-Term  Capital  Management,    t 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


the  $4  8  billion  fund  that  had  to  be  bailed 
OUt  last  year  by  a  consortium  of  banks, 
( Tamer's  fund  was  having  a  rough  third 
quarter.  He  was  extremely  upset,  "lor  the 
first  lucking  tune  in  my  file,  I  don't  do 
well,"  fie  says,  fiis  eyes  tearing  up  again. 
(  ranter's  letter  to  his  investors  about  the 
fund's  performance  was  so  "abject,"  one 
investor  remembers,  "that  I  was  afraid  he 
was  going  to  kill  himself.  I  called  him  up. 
I  wanted  to  reassure  him." 

Cramer  is  convinced  that  Peretz  saw 
how  vulnerable  he  was  and  chose  that 
moment  to  strike.  In  early  October,  Cra- 
mer received  several  letters  from  investors 
informing  him  that  they  were  withdraw- 
ing from  his  fund,  including  a  letter  from 
Peretz  which  explained  that  he  was  also 
taking  his  money  out.  "They  all  pulled 
out  at  the  same  time,"  says  Cramer,  "and 
I  have  to  sell  [to  raise  the  tens  of  millions 
of  dollars  needed  to  pay  Peretz  and  oth- 
er investors]  into  the  worst  market  possi- 
ble." And  then,  as  if  to  pour  salt  on  his 
open  wound,  Cramer  believes,  Peretz 
leaked  the  information  about  his  fund's 
poor  performance  to  Tne  New  York  Times— 
although  any  of  Cramer's  many  investors 
could  have  given  the  letter  to  the  newspa- 
per. "If  I  were  single  and  alone,  then  this 
would  be  Mad  Max  in  [1985's  Mad  Max 
Beyond]  Thunderdome.  But  I'm  not.  I'm 
a  guy  with  kids  and  a  wife,"  says  Cramer, 
his  eyes  frozen  wide  open  with  anger. 
"This  man,  Marty,  was  my  best  man  at 
my  wedding.  Things  haven't  worked  out. 
I  would  like  very  much  for  his  acrimony 
to  die  down  and  for  him  not  to  speak  to 
reporters  about  me.  I  want  it  to  end." 

"Jim's  behavior,"  says  Peretz,  "is  a  sad 
story."  Peretz  says  that  he  did  not  release 


id  The  New  York  Times  any  information 
about  the  performance  of  Cramer's  hedge 
fund.  He  also  insists  that  he  did  not  urge 
anyone  to  pull  out  of  the  fund.  "No  one," 
he  says,  choosing  his  words  carefully, 
"can  say  that  Jim  is  other  than  a  spectac- 
ular investor."  Peretz  says  he  withdrew 
his  family's  money  (and  Crimson  Invest- 
ments) from  Cramer,  Berkowitz  in  Octo- 
ber because  he  had  no  other  choice.  Last 
August,  says  Peretz,  without  talking  to 
him,  Cramer  abruptly  resigned  as  a  trust- 
ee from  several  Peretz-family  trusts.  As 
Peretz  recalls,  "Jim  had  his  assistant  call 
my  accountant  to  tell  him  Jim  had  quit. 
Of  course  I  take  my  family's  money  out," 
Peretz  says.  "People  don't  leave  their 
money  with  managers  who  aren't  talking 
to  them."  "Let  me  say  this  about  this 
trust  canard,"  says  Cramer.  "For  a  very, 
very  long  time  I  had  not  been  included  in 
any  substantive  discussions  or  decisions 
involving  those  trusts  by  the  manager  of 

that  trust I  didn't  think  I  should  be 

paid  or  continue  to  be  a  trustee  of  some- 
thing where  I  was  neither  being  consulted 
on  nor  involved  in.  I  should  have  consult- 
ed with  Marty  about  this,  but  my  prob- 
lem was  not  with  Marty,  as  he  was  not 
the  manager." 

ho's  right?  Among  their  friends, 
among  those  who  have  not  taken 
sides,  there  is  bafflement.  "I  don't 
really  know  what  went  on  between  Marty 
and  Jim,"  says  Michael  Kinsley.  "It's  an 
Oedipal  thing,  I  assume,  to  some  degree 
or  another.  Marty  enjoys  taking  a  paternal 
role,  and  Jim  began  to  feel  as  though  he'd 
outgrown  that.  But  that's  just  specula- 
tion." Joseph  Kahn,  the  New  York  Times 
reporter  who  wrote  the  crucial  story 
about  Cramer,  and  who  holds  at  least  one 
key  to  the  mystery,  will  not  comment  on 
who  his  sources  were. 

"There  isn't  a  chance  in  hell  that  our 
feud  will  end  as  long  as  I'm  living  on 
this  planet,  from  the  way  I  see  things," 
Cramer  said  several  weeks  ago.  He 
insisted  that  he  was  right,  and  he 
was  sure  that  even  if  TheStreet. corn's 
initial  public  offering  is  as  success- 
ful as  people  anticipate— and  the 
company  he  and  Peretz  created  to- 
gether turns  out  to  reap  huge  re- 
wards for  both— he  and  Peretz  wouldn't 
be  celebrating  together.  But  then  Cramer 
claimed  to  have  had  a  change  of 
te  ,       heart  and  insisted  that  the  feud 
Em,    was  over.  Whether  the  truce 
Cramer  believes  to  exist  will 
hold  remains  to  be  seen. 
i  As  he  readily  admits,  "I 
k  am  fiery,  abrasive,  and 
\  indefatigable,  and  always 
will  be."  □ 

JUNE      1999 


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SETTING  THE  STANDARD 

Andre  Balazs,  owner 

of  the  Standard,  reclines 

on  a  Richard  SchuKz 

chaise  longue  by  the  pool 

of  his  new,  140-room 

West  Hollywood  hotel. 


HOTEL  CALIFORNIA 

The  Standard,  Andre  Balazs  s 

newest  hotel,  is  designed  to  lure  the  young 

and  restless  by  marrying 

chic  with  cheap,  and  past  with  future 

BY  MATT  TYRNAUER 


he  sign  on  Sunset  Boulevard  reads  aravaNVis  hhi,  which 
is  the  first  indication  that  Andre  Balazs's  new,  West  Holly- 
wood hotel  is  anything  but.  "It's  meant  to  be  a  new  twist, 
an  entirely  different  take,  on  the  idea  of  an  inexpensive  ho- 
tel—a category  that  has  suffered  greatly  from  lack  of  inno- 
vation," says  the  42-year-old  Balazs,  who  is  also  the  propri- 
etor of  the  legendary  Chateau  Marmont  (200  yards  due  east  of 
the  Standard  on  the  Sunset  Strip)  and  the  stylish  Mercer  hotel 
in  New  York  City,  which  is  around  the  corner  from  the  SoHo 
loft  Balazs  shares  with  his  wife,  Katie  Ford,  president  of  Ford 
Models,  Inc.  "I've  found  in  looking  at  hotels  over  the  years  that 
the  way  we  live  changes  about  every  decade,"  Balazs  continues, 
"and  this  is  an  attempt  to  address  the  already  existing  sophisti- 
cation of  a  younger  group  of  people  who  are  not  traveling  with 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPHS 


TODD     E  B  E  R  L  E 


JUNE     1999 


ivian     evian 


L'original 


In  the  rooms, 
guests  will 
find  inflatable  sol 
Eames  surf  boars 
tables,  and  Warm 
draperies. 


THE  MODERN  ERA 

Clockwise  from  top:  the  hotel's 

"conversation  pit"  is  lined  with  white  shag  carpet  (floor 

and  ceiling)  and  features  Ligne  Roset  sectional  seating, 

Arco  lamps,  and  Baleri  egg  seats;  a  photomural  of 

Joshua  Tree  National  Monument  in  the  hotel's  lounge;  the 

restaurant,  which  looks  out  onto  the  Sunset  Strip, 

is  done  in  a  spare,  50s  style;  behind  the 

clerks  at  the  front  desk,  a  model  reclines  in  the 

wenge-wood-and-glass  vitrine. 

104     I     VANITY     FAIR 


the  budget  of  a  luxury  traveler,  but  are  every  bit  as  sophisticated." 
In  other  words,  Balazs  hopes  the  Standard  will  become  a  cheap- 
chic  mecca  for  the  ever  expanding  Prada-Gucci  tribe,  the  style- 
conscious  Gen-Xers  and  baby-boomers  who  worship  at  the  Carrara- 
marble  altar  of  jet-age  modernity,  an  aesthetic  the  Standard  offers 
in  near-lethal  doses. 

"The  intention  was  to  push  the  boundaries  of  what  hotel  de- 
sign is,  and  recognize  that  there  are  new  tastes  and  new  expecta- 
tions," says  Balazs,  who  worked  closely  with  production  designer 
Shawn  Hausman  on  the  plans  for  the  5ar/we//a-meets-Charles 
Eames-meets-Sheikh  Abdullah's  707  look  of  the  140-room  hotel. 
"I'd  call  the  look  of  the  place  'timeless  modern,"'  says  Haus- 
man, who  also  helped  refurbish  the  Chateau  Marmont  interiors. 
"You  know,  taking  things  from  the  50s,  60s,  and  70s— Arco 
lamps,  Ligne  Roset  chairs,  and  new  pieces— then  combining  them 
to  add  up  to  2000." 

"But  the  Standard  is  not  meant  to  be  a  retro  incarnation  of  a 
hotel,"  Balazs  is  quick  to  add.  "It  is  meant  to  be  forward-looking." 
From  the  white  shag  carpet  (floor  and  ceiling)  in  the  lobby's 
"cocoon/conversation  pit"  to  the  large  vitrine  behind  the  front 
desk  which  houses  a  slumbering 
nude  woman  (she  is  alive  and  she 
is  allowed  to  take  breaks,  "for  ob- 
vious reasons,"  says  Balazs),  there 
is  no  dearth  of  creativity  in  the 
design  scheme.  Among  the  more 
significant  examples  of  millennial 
hotel  innovation:  a  disc  jockey's 
booth  built  into  the  front  desk,  a 
performance  artist-gardener  who 
"mows"  the  electric-blue  Astro- 
Turf  surrounding  the  rectangular 
pool,  a  screening  room  in  the 
lobby,  and  a  tattoo  parlor  and 
barbershop. 

Up  in  the  pared-down  rooms 

(which    CONTINUED    "N    PA( 

JUNE     1999 


Imagine  all  the  uses  for  this 

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Core  &oy 
nti0Nr  ulhth  /\   &AP 


vtcufettNp  ujho  uces 


Introducing  Intuitions.  A  distinct  and  exciting 
new  line  of  cards  from  American  Greetings. 


8 


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-as1--* 

congratulations 


Intuitions  from  American  Greetings, 


An  off-beat  sense  of  humor. 


A  unique  point  of  view. 


A  distinct  alternative  to 
traditional  greeting  cards. 


Inside: 


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,ns,'de.- you've  got 

^PpyKay°Vertheh/"- 


For  birthdays,  anniversaries,  or 
no  particular  reason  at  all. 


They're  cards  you  can  send  any  day. 


But  are  far  from  the  everyday. 


m 


AMERICAN  GREETINGS 

...says  it  best 


■a*-  the  best  things 
,nS,de--n  lite  aren't  things. 

happy  birthday 


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Balazs  hopes 
the  Standard  will 
be  a  cheap-chic 
mecca  for  the  ev 
expanding 
Prada-Gucci  tribe 


0  4  range  from  $95  to  $200  a  night), 
guests  will  find  inflatable  sofas  (maids  carry  air  pumps  on  their 
carts),  Eames  surfboard  tables,  Andy  Warhol  flower-print  drap- 
eries (Balazs  licensed  the  print  from  the  Andy  Warhol  Foun- 
dation for  the  Visual  Arts),  Ultrasuede  floor  pillows,  and  such 
crucial  mini-bar  amenities  as  cold  sake,  patchouli  and  ylang- 
ylang  candles.  Vaseline,  and  Saint- John's-wort  soft  drinks.  For 
business  travelers  the  rooms  are  wired  with  Tl  Internet  hookups. 
Even  low-tech  fixtures  have  been  revised— Balazs  refitted  the 
thermostats  with  only  four  settings:  blow,  hard,  harder,  and 
stop.  "I  really  wanted  the  place  to  have  a  sort  of  sexiness,"  he 
says,  flashing  a  sheepish  grin. 

In  the  brief  period  since  its  opening,  the  West  Hollywood 
Standard  has  become  a  hit,  and  there  are  plans  to  open  branch 
operations  in  New  York  and  Chicago,  each  with  its  own  distinct 
style.  (Investors  in  the  L.A.  venture  include  Leonardo  DiCaprio, 
Cameron  Diaz,  Benicio  Del  Toro,  and  the  Smashing  Pumpkins' 
D'arcy  Wretzky  and  James  Iha.) 

The  greater  scheme,  Balazs  says,  is  to  "redefine  what  people 
have  come  to  expect  in  a  hotel  ...  up  the  aesthetic  stakes  so 
that  we  can  deliver  something  that's  really  high-quality,  that 
does  what  it's  intended  to  do  but  that  isn't  sullen— something 
that  will  eventually  be  so,  well, 
so  standard  people  know  what 
to  expect  from  it."  □ 


BLUE  HEAVEN 

Clockwise  from  top:  the  Standard's 

undulating  rear  facade,  which  overlooks  the 

swimming  pool  and  the  flatlands  of  West 

Hollywood;  Warhol  draperies  decorate  a  room; 

Eero  Aarnio  bubble  chairs  hang  in  the  foyer; 

the  beds  are  inspired  by  a  Gio  Ponte  design; 

at  the  pool,  blue  AstroTurf  is 

offset  by  planters  of  green  grass 

and  a  Ping-Pong  table. 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE      1999 


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At  V.F.  s  sixth  annual  Oscar  party, 
the  only  hips  that  weren't  twitching  to 
the  rhythms  of  Havana's  hottest  salsa 
band  belonged  to  those  coveted  statues. 
Photographed  by  Jonathan  Becker, 
Dafydd  Jones,  and  Patrick  McMullan 


Patrick  Whitesell 

Ben  Affleck,  anc 

Matt  Damor 


'<* 


^ 


n  late  March  the  live-action  epic  "Invasion  of  the 
Little  Gold  Men"  was  played  out  in  West  Holly- 
wood at  the  sixth  annual  Vanity  Fair  party,  to  cel- 
ebrate the  71st  annual  Academy  Awards.  The 
parking  lot  of  Mortons  restaurant  (densely  forest- 
ed with  banana  trees)  was  the  scene  of  the  onslaught, 
which  began,  as  always,  in  broad  daylight,  as  limos  and 
j     a  fleet  of  the  new  Jaguar  S-Type  cars  off-loaded  the 
principal  players  in  the  event— the  regiment  of  swell- 
egant  stars  and  notables  attending  V.F.'s  dinner  fes- 
I     tivities.  Inside  Mortons,  seated  around  intimate  tables 
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continued  from  page  n2  one  bouffant-haired  phe- 
nomenon—Monica Lewinsky.  Also  in  attendance  were 
Madonna,  Anthony  Hopkins,  Alec  Baldwin  and  Kim 
Basinger,  Jay  Leno,  Betsy  Bloomingdale,  Billy  Wilder, 
Goldie  Hawn  and  Kurt  Russell,  Rupert  Everett,  Ahmet 
Ertegun,  Ron  Howard,  Cameron  Crowe,  Neve  Campbell, 
Barry  Diller,  Diane  Von  Furstenberg,  Angie  Dickinson, 
Peter  Gallagher,  Penny  Marshall,  Artie  Shaw,  Matt  Dil- 
lon, Ronald  Perelman,  Faye  Dunaway,  Merv  Griffin, 
Candice  Bergen,  Brian  Grazer,  Steve  Martin,  Michael 
Bloomberg,  Fran  Lebowitz,  David  Hockney,  Henry 
Grunwald,  Charles  Gwathmey,  S.  I.  Newhouse  Jr.,  James 
Truman,  Barry  Sonnenfeld,  and  Sidney  Poitier  (among 
many  others).  As  the  after-dinner  guests  began  to  arrive  in 
force,  and  the  14-piece  Cuban  band  Adalberto  Alvarez  y 


tall  Gold  Men  (with  their  triumphant  owners)  finally 
appeared,  raising  a  deafening  roar  from  the  crowd  of 
hundreds  waiting  in  the  street.  Gwyneth  Paltrow,  Norman 
Jewison,  Harvey  Weinstein,  Marc  Norman,  Edward 
Zwick,  and  Bill  Condon,  among  others,  all  carried  Os- 
cars into  Mortons  and  the  specially  constructed  7,000- 
square-foot  tented  room  adjacent  to  the  restaurant,  where 
the  winners  were  joined  by  1998  Oscar  nominees  Warren 
Beatty,  Cate  Blanchett,  Edward  Norton,  Meryl  Streep, 
Emily  Watson,  Peter  Weir,  and  Ian  McKellen.  Other  cel- 
ebrants included  Jim  Carrey,  Robert  De  Niro,  Renee 
Zellweger,  Chris  Rock,  Anjelica  Huston,  Robert  Graham, 
Norman  Reedus,  Mariah  Carey,  Giovanni  Ribisi,  Kevin 
Costner,  Colin  Powell,  Howard  Safir,  Michael  Caton- 
Jones,  Julia  Ormond,  Matt  Damon,  Ben  Affleck,  Sean 
"Puffy"  Combs,  Guy  Ritchie,  Jeffrey  Katzenberg,  Barbet 
Schroeder,  Martin  Scorsese,  Tom  Ford,  Jonathan  Dol- 
gen,  Ed  Burns,  and  nine  of  Ms.  Paltrow's  nearest  and 
dearest  (including  her  grandfather  Buster).  Shoshanna 
Lonstein  was  the  most  versatile  party  guest,  volunteer- 
ing as  a  coffee  server,  then  performing  numerous  salsa 
dances  (solo  and  accompanied),  which  inspired  fellow 
revelers,  who  nicked  the  parquet  until  the  Hollywood  sky 
gave  hint  of  dawn  and  the  social  forces  of  Oscar  night 
made  their  reluctant  retreat  home.      —matt  tyrnauer 


Fran  Lebowitz  and 
Candice  Bergen 


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■en  Barkin  and 
JeffGoldblum 


David  Harris 
and  Pamela 
Anderson    « 


f 


Mavis  Leno, 
Merv  Griffin,  and 


NUVIS "S:  STAINLESS  STEEL  SHELL  /  3X  ZOOM  LENS  /  OPEN  AND  SHOOT 


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A  ecause  in  his  36 

^B  years  as  a  pioneer 

^J  of  rock  guitar  (in 

M___- ^^     the  Yardbirds,  John 

Mayall's  Bluesbreakers,  Cream,  Blind 


VANITY     FAIR     NOMINATES 


Eric  Clapton 


Rock  legend  I  i  k  Clapton, 

54,  still  humbled  by 

his  heroes— Big  Bill  Broonzy, 

Robert  Johnson,  Muddy 

Waters  included— photographed 

in  New  York  City  on 

March  17,  1999. 


been  known  to  get  pre-concert  jitters 
when  he  goes  onstage,  because  he's 
lived  the  blues— he  was  abandoned  by 
his  father  before  he  was  born;  he  lost 
his  beloved  four-year-old  son,  Conor, 


Faith,  Derek  &  the  Dominos,  then  solo),  this  London  native 
turned  American  kids  on  to  their  own  Mississippi  Delta  blues 
and  electrified  a  generation,  because  to  him  the  blues  were  "a 
man's  music  . . .  very  deep  and  mature,  a  way  for  me  to  identify 
with  the  idea  of  becoming  a  man."  BECAUSE  he  is  elegant  and 
shy  and  never  fell  for  the  60s  graffiti  that  proclaimed  "Clapton  is 
God."  because  even  with  13  Grammys  and  two  Rock  and  Roll 
Hall  of  Fame  inductions  (with  the  Yardbirds  and  Cream),  he  has 


in  a  tragic  accident  in  1991— yet  he  still  sees  music  as  a  healing 
force,  because  he's  survived  broken  relationships  and  conquered 
drug  and  alcohol  addictions— and  has  aged  more  gracefully  than 
most  of  his  contemporaries,  because  on  June  24,  Christie's  will 
auction  100  of  his  guitars  in  New  York  to  benefit  the  Crossroads 
Centre  at  Antigua,  a  nonprofit  rehabilitation  facility  he  recently 
founded  for  treatment  of  substance  abuse,  because  he's  a  super- 
star who  sees  himself  as  a  journeyman.  —LISA  robinson 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH    BY     NORMAN     WATSON 


JUNE     1999 


What's  my  bag? 
It's  milk,  baby,  yeah! 


-&.S: 


■ 


/ 


'ol 


The  calcium  in  lowfat  or 

fat  free  milk  helps  to  prevent 

osteoporosis  and  keep  my 

bones  strons.  So  I  can  keep  my 

mojo  workins  overtime. 

Oh,  behave. 


THE  DICTATOR 
AND  THE  DEAD 

Chile  s  former  dictator 

83-year-old  Augusto 

Pinochet  went  to  London 

in  October  for  a  pleasant 

stay.  He  ended  up  under 

house  arrest,  charged  by  a 

Spanish  judge  with  murder, 

terrorism,  and  torture.  As 

his  avengers  excavate  the 

general's  alleged  crimes, 

his  case  is  shattering 

the  boundaries  of  political 

power  and  diplomatic 

immunity  forever 

BY  JUDY  BACHRACH 


m 

J 

¥ 


t  was  well  after  midnight.  Oblivious 
to  all  the  turmoil  and  fury  he  had  un- 
leashed, the  old  man  lay  dozing  after 
his  back  operation  in  his  private 
room  on  the  fifth  floor  of  the  Lon- 
don Clinic  in  Regent's  Park.  Sick  or 
well,  he  was  no  stranger  to  England. 
He  had  traveled  there  many  times 
before,  despite  warnings  from  friends,  gov- 
ernment officials,  and  lawyers  that  he  was 
being  pursued,  that  the  enemies  at  his  heels 


POWER  OF  PERSUASION 
Pinochet  on  September  11,  1973,  the 
day  he  deposed  Salvador  Allende,  Santiago 
Chile;  inset,  suspected  Allende  supporters 
taken  by  the  military  to  Santiago's 
National  Stadium,  September  1973. 


were,  in  fact,  just  about  ready  to  pounce. 
These  enemies— officials  of  Amnesty  In- 
ternational, a  Spanish  judge,  a  friend  of 
murdered  politicians— had  quietly  watched 
him  on  previous  visits  to  London,  where 
the  general  went  to  buy  military  equip- 
ment and  to  amuse  himself.  They  were  de- 
lighted by  his  return.  So,  at  first,  was  the 
old  man  with  the  bad  back:  General  Au- 
gusto Pinochet  Ugarte,  who  loved  London. 


"Me  encanta  Lon- 
dres!"  the  83-year-old 
former  Chilean  dicta- 
tor informed  a  dear 
friend  just  a  few  days 
before  his  back  opera- 
tion, when,  as  this  friend 
notes  with  a  laugh,  "it  was 
pissing  with  rain."  Part  of 
Pinochet's  pleasure  that  wet,  nasty  evening 
derived  from  having  been  well  feted  and 
well  understood  within  a  certain  political 
sector  of  London,  even  if  nowhere  else  in 
Europe.  France,  home  of  his  great  hero 
Napoleon,  had  just  refused  him,  without 
a  word  of  explanation,  a  visa  to  visit  a  few 
antiquarian  bookshops. 

By  contrast,  in  England  there  was  much 
to  soothe  Pinochet  this  past  October. 
Wearing  his  new  Burberry  coat  over  a 


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by  the  arrest  of  an  old  ally,  told  conserve 
tive  writei  William  I  Buckley  Jr.  thai  Pi- 
nochet's regime  had  no  monopoly  on 
death  and  torture:  "B>  contrast  with  rou- 
tine barbarisms  in  other  countries,  n  was 
en  .1  minoi  scale."  said  the  former  secre- 
tary of  state. 

But  in  some  portions  of  the  world  there 
was  considerable  glee  over  the  gener- 
al's novel  predicament:  the  predate] 

was  now  prey.  Under  his  regime,  bodies  of 
prisoners  had  been  tossed  out  of  helicop- 
ters; captives  raped  as  a  matter  of  course 
by  members  of  Pinochet's  secret  police; 
the  bodies  of  the  massacred  (including  the 
Chilean  folksinger  Victor  Jara  and  the  Amer- 
ican journalist  Charles  Herman)  dumped 
into  or  near  public  cemeteries,  so  their 
bodies  wouldn't  be  identified.  "The  dead 
cornered  him,"  the  Chilean  writer  Ariel 
Dorfman,  author  of  the  1991  play  Death 
and  the  Maiden,  tells  me.  "The  desapareci- 
dos,  I  would  say,  walled  him  in." 

In  France  and  Switzerland,  warrants 
holding  Pinochet  accountable  in  the  deaths 
of  some  of  their  citizens  were  issued  in  the 
fall.  Sweden  and  Germany,  citing  injuries 
to  their  own  compatriots  in  Pinochet's 
Chile  more  than  two  decades  ago,  were 
considering  much  the  same  course— as  was 
Italy.  In  Britain,  the  families  of  a  presumed 
murder  victim  and  a  doctor  who  was  tor- 
tured in  Chile  were  clamoring  for  justice. 

TT1 


Even  the  United  Stales,  which  ardently 

supported  Pinochet  during  the  Nixon 
years  (at  the  time,  he  was  considered  a 
right-wing  bulwark  against  encroaching 

Communism  in  Latin  America),  claimed 
to  be  considering  the  prospect  of  trying 
Pinochet  here.  At  least,  so  said  U.S.  at- 
torney general  Janet  Reno  in  January.  A 
month  earlier,  the  Clinton  administration 
had  promised  to  declassify  some  of  its  in- 
formation on  Chile— a  promise  that  some 
intelligence  agencies  still  seem  reluctant 
to  fulfill. 

A  number  of  knowledgeable  Americans, 
among  them  a  former  federal  prosecutor, 
believe  Pinochet  to  be  the  bandido  who  or- 
dered the  murder  in  Washington,  D.C.,  of 
the  Chilean  socialist  political  star  Orlando 
Letelier.  Yet  for  23  years  no  U.S.  official  has 
attempted  to  extradite  Pinochet  and  have 
him  tried  for  conspiracy  to  murder  on  Amer- 
ican soil.  That  assassination,  which  took 
place  in  1976  on  Embassy  Row,  also  killed  a 
25-year-old  American  woman  named  Ron- 
ni  Karpen  Moffitt,  who  was  by  the  politi- 
cian's side  when  the  car  bomb  was  deto- 
nated. Her  husband,  Michael  Moffitt,  was 
in  the  backseat  of  Letelier's  blue  Chevelle 
at  the  time  of  the  explosion.  As  he  attempt- 
ed to  lift  Letelier  out  of  the  car,  the  body 
fell  apart  in  his  hands.  Then  he  watched 
his  young  wife  choke  on  her  own  blood. 

"There  was  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that 
Pinochet  ordered  the  murders,"  Lawrence 
Barcella,  who  helped  prosecute  the  case, 
tells  me.  But  in  1976,  Pinochet  was  a 
chief  of  state  protected  by  a  devoted  mil- 
\    itary,  a  brutal  secret  service,  and  state 
:    immunity.  These  symbols  of  security 
still  live  in  the  heart  of  the  autocrat. 
"With  respect  to  Your  Honor,  I  do 
...  .-?**  . 

;5 


STIFF  UPPER  LIP 

Margaret  Thatcher  visiting 

General  and  Mrs.  Pinochet  in 

Surrey,  March  26,  1999,  shortly 

after  the  decision  to  extradite 

him;  right,  the  Surrey  house 

where  Pinochet  was  believed 

held  under  house  arrest. 


inarsi 


Jiin 


not  recognize  the  jurisdiction  of  any  oth- 
er court,  except  in  my  country,  to  try  me 
against  all  the  lies  of  Spain,"  the  general 
told  a  London  judge  in  an  oak-paneled 
courtroom  last  December. 

n  fact,  many  of  the  world's  rulers  would 

wholeheartedly  agree.  "Under  the  old  set 

of  rules  you  didn't  pursue  former  heads 
of  state,"  explains  a  Washington  investiga- 
tor in  frequent  contact  with  the  State  De- 
partment. "The  new  rules  haven't  been 
carefully  thought  through."  If  an  ex-head 
of  state  is  arrested,  goes  the  thinking,  then 
what  current  or  former  national  official  is 
safe  in  his  travels?  President  Clinton  after 
the  bombing  of  Belgrade?  Madeleine  Al- 
bright after  an  attack  on  Iraq? 

Equally  worrisome,  what  possible  im- 
petus exists  now  for  any  dictator  to  retire 
peaceably?  Could  Serb  tyrant  Slobodan 
Milosevic,  for  example,  possibly  be  tempt- 
ed to  leave  office  now  that  Lord  Justice 
Nicholas  Phillips  has  written  that  Britain  has 
no  legal  obligation  to  worry  about  Pinochet 
since  he  is  only  a  former  head  of  state? 

"No,  it's  not  possible!"  gasped  Fidel 
Castro  when  he  heard  the  news  that  Pi- 
nochet had  been  stripped  of  his  immuni- 
ty, say  two  observers.  It  took  him  a  mo- 
ment to  collect  himself.  "Well,  morally 
they're  right,"  he  finally  managed.  "But 
legally  it's  questionable.  Diplomatically 
it's  a  disaster." 

"There  was  torture  of  the  I.R.A.  in  var- 
ious places— of  course  there  was,"  Robin 
Harris,  a  top  Thatcher  aide,  tells  me.  "Are 
they  going  to  say  that  Lady  Thatcher  or- 
dered this  torture?" 

From  her  office  in  her  pale  19th-century 

town  house,  Margaret  Thatcher  appears 

impervious  to  all  possible  attacks.  At 

lunchtime  she  emerges  resplendent  in  a 

snug-fitting  navy-blue  suit,  the  brooch  on 

her  lapel  encrusted  with  large,  beautifully 

cut  Victorian  diamonds.  In  her  wake  is  the 

only  person  she  can't  seem  to  control— her 

husband,  Denis.  I  tell  him  I'm  writing 

IW     about  the  debacle  resulting  from  the 

arrest  of  Pinochet.  The  response  is 

*\   a  violent  twist  of  his  trilby,  a  savage 

>    grimace,  and  a  salvo  against  Tony 

Blair's  regime,  which  is  patently  in 

sympathy  with  Pinochet's  enemies. 

"It's  all  because  of  this  stinking 

government!"  he  says.  "This  stinking, 
stinking,  stinking  government!" 

eanwhile,  deep  in  the  leafy  country- 
side of  Surrey,  the  Chilean  autocrat, 
who  was  once  so  enchanted  with 
London,  sits  under  house  arrest.  The  two- 
story,  thin-brick  house,  which  rents  for 
about  $17,000  a  month,  is  surrounded  by 
pines  but  crawling  with  police,  which 
costs  the  British  taxpayers  about  $80,000 

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Dispalcl 


general's  l<  |  al  bills  are  said 
to  appn  irim  ite  $ I  6  million  These  extra- 
.  rdinai  \      pens*  paid  mainly  by 

Chilean  friends:  there  is  something  called 
the  tagusto  Pinochet  Foundation,  winch 
actual!)  sells  a  Cabernet  Sauvignon  called 
i  apitan  General  for  $25  a  botde  to  thirsty 
sympathizers. 

Pinochet's  wile,  Lucia  Hiriarl,  a  proud. 
Strong-willed  woman  in  her  70s,  can  barely 
contain  herself:  "What  about  your  family?" 
she  reportedly  snapped  at  her  husband. 
"All  we  have  is  your  pension."  She  goes 


pened  to  mention  the  subject  ol  torture,  .1 

(ate  that  afflicted  thousands  of  Chileans 

after  Pinochet  overthrew,  in  1973,  the  dem- 
ocratically elected  president,  Salvador  Al- 
lende.  I  Ins  prompted  an  immediate  out- 
burst from  the  normally  taciturn  general. 
" Ol  course  torture  occurred  under  my  gov- 
ernment," the  general  said.  Quickly  he 
added,  without  offering  a  shred  of  proof, 
"And  it  occurred  under  Allende's." 

Because  there  are  so  many  myths  sur- 
rounding the  late  Salvador  Allende  (for 
years  the  leftist  assumption  was  that  he 
had  been  martyred  by  a  volley  of  bullets 
from  Pinochet's  troops,  which  is  no  longer 
considered  likely),  I  consult  Alistair  Home, 
a  British  expert  on  Chile,  who  was  among 
the  first  to  dispel  the  myth  that  Allende 
was  beyond  reproach.  At  the  same  time,  he 
is  no  fan  of  Pinochet,  whom  he  has  met 
and  interviewed. 

Was  Allende  another  Castro,  a  threat  to 
America  in  1973?,  I  ask. 

"I  think  the  indications  were  he  could 
have  been,"  Home  replies,  pointing  out 
that  in  his  last  years  Allende  "was  far  left 
of  the  Chilean  Communist  Party."  On  the 


to  the  market  on  foot  with  her 
middle-aged  daughter,  also  named  Lucia. 

Pinochet  is  deprived  even  of  these  mod- 
est outings— and  so  much  more.  He  was 
not  allowed  out  for  church  last  Christmas. 
The  general's  visitors  are  few,  his  mood 
grim,  his  utterances  scant  but  unusually 
candid. 

On  a  recent  visit  to  the  sparsely  fur- 
nished house,  one  acquaintance  hap- 


■ 


other  hand,  he  adds,  Allende  "was  a  bit 
of  a  champagne  socialist.  And  a  playboy." 
The  United  States,  however,  consid- 
ered Allende  a  serious  source  of  alarm- 
as  Allende  very  likely  intended.  In  a  fa- 
mous interview  with  the  French  Marxist 
Regis  Debray,  Allende  openly  swooned 
over  Che  Guevara,  Chou  En  Lai,  Ho 
Chi  Minh,  and  Castro,  who,  on  receiving 


a  warming  hero's  welcome  in  1971,  decid- 
ed to  stay  in  Chile  over  20  days. 

Nor  did  Allende  confine  himself  to 
adoring  rhetoric.  He  completed  the  na- 
tionalization of  Chile's  copper  industry 
a  resource  that  had  previously  lined  the 
pockets  of  American  business  titans. 
Worse,  as  Home  points  out,  within  Chile 
"there  was  a  lot  of  evidence  of  Czech 
arms,  Cuban  arms,  guerrilla  instructors 
moving  into  the  country." 

On  September  15,  1970,  Director  of  Cen- 
tral Intelligence  Richard  Helms  scrawled 
explicit  notes,  recording  President  Richard 
Nixon's  decision  to  block  Allende's  as- 
cension to  power:  "Make  the  economy 
scream,"  ordered  the  president,  promising 
"$10  million  available,  more  if  necessary." 
Nixon  was  under  no  illusions  about  how 
to  achieve  his  aims.  It  would  be,  he  told 
Helms,  a  "full-time  job"  for  which  "the 
best  men"  were  needed. 

American   officials   were   as   good   as 
their  word— not  that  C.I.A.  intervention 
was  strictly  necessary  to  achieve  destabi- 
lization,  it  is  now  thought.  The  Chilean 
economy,  suffering  from  1,000  percent  in- 
flation in  1973,  was  well  on  its  way  to  ruin. 
"Allende   was   not   a   politician   of  the 
stamp  of  Machiavelli,"  Home  says  dryly. 
"I  don't  think  he  understood  how  things 
worked  economically." 

The  United  States  did,  however.  Local 
politicians  were  bribed,  American  money 
proffered  for  an  attempted  kidnapping  of 
a  Chilean  general.  When  Chilean  truckers 
went  on  strike,  the  C.I.A.  paid  them  to 
stay  out.  As  a  result,  in  the  big  cities  there 
was  no  bread,  no  meat.  Stores  closed. 

I  ate  in  the  morning  of  September  11,  1973, 
Chilean  Air  Force  Hawker  Hunters  fired 
18  rockets  straight  into  the  300-year- 
old  presidential  palace,  where  Allende  had 
holed  up  with  his  aides.  One  of  these  was 
Juan  Garces,  a  29-year-old  Spaniard. 
When  the  assaults  grew  so  bad  that 
gas  masks  had  to  be  put  on,  the 
I    president  told  him  to  leave  the 
>    palace.  Leading  the  coup  was 
General  Pinochet.  Garces  tells  me 
that  on  learning  of  the  betrayal  of  his 
military  commander  Allende  showed  no 
anger.  He  was  succinct  in  his  commands: 
his  minister  of  defense,  Orlando  Letelier, 
was  told  to  stay  on  the  job  "until  the  end." 
Then  he  added  Pinochet's  name  to  a  small 
but  growing  list:  "Traitors,"  he  explained. 

"That  was  his  only  reaction,  but  very 
calm,"  Garces  recalls.  By  2:45  p.m.,  the 
calm  was  total.  Allende  was  found  dead 
in  his  office. 

"He  had  killed  himself  by  placing  a  sub- 
machine gun  under  his  chin  and  pulling 
the  trigger.  Messy,  but  efficient,"  U.S.  Navy 
lieutenant  colonel  Patrick  J.  Ryan  wrote  his 


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superior!   i  few  weeks  lata  in  a  report  that 
has  "illy  recently  been  declassified, 

As  11  happens,  Garces,  too,  believes 
AUende  very  likely  killed  himself,  "it  was 
impossible  to  continue,"  he  tells  me.  Per- 
petually lucky,  the  young  Spaniard  was 
whisked  into  safety  by  his  country's  am- 
bassador and  then  llown  out  of  Chile  to 
Madrid  on  a  special  plane.  He  is  one  of 
the  few  palace  survivors  of  that  day. 
Within  I1)  days  of  the  coup,  320  people 
were  summarily  executed  by  the  military; 
1,500  killed;  more  than  13,500  arrested, 
many  rounded  up  and  tortured  at  Santia- 
go's National  Stadium.  The  Nixon  admin- 
istration, despite  learning  of  these  abuses, 
gave  economic  aid  to  Chile:  suddenly 
there  were  funds  made  available  for  hous- 
ing, military  supplies,  and  agriculture. 

Within  two  months  of  the  coup,  Pino- 
chet had  established  uina,  his  secret  po- 
lice. At  its  head  was  Colonel  Manuel 
Contreras,  who  had  breakfast  daily  with 
Pinochet  as  the  disappearances  and  acts 
of  torture  were  stepped  up. 

"All  the  personal  assistants  to 
the  president  were  arrested  and 
tortured  to  death— or  are  still 
missing,"   Garces   says   softly. 
"Fifteen  people  in  all.  They  were 
all  my  friends." 

In  a  way,  they  are  still  with  him, 
however— all  his  dead  friends,  Al- 
lende  included.  For  the  last  three 
years,  Garces  has  been  gathering 
evidence,  testimony,  and  documents. 
In  fact,  it  is  no  stretch  to  call  him  the 
godfather  of  Pinochet's  captivity. 

The  involvement  of  this  modest  but  per- 
sistent 55-year-old  lawyer,  however,  particu- 
larly galls  the  Pinochet  forces.  To  them 
Garces's  mission  seems  a  political  vendetta 
and  smacks  of  rank  ingratitude:  "General 
Pinochet  allowed  this  man  Garces  to  es- 
cape on  the  day  of  the  coup!"  explodes  a 
Pinochet  friend.  "He  should  have  plunged 
a  dagger  through  his  heart." 

Perhaps  aware  of  such  sentiments,  Gar- 
ces is  cautious  about  many  things.  Al- 
though we  correspond  for  weeks  by  E-mail, 
Garces  does  not  tell  me  where  to  meet 
him  until  just  a  few  minutes  before  the  in- 
terview actually  takes  place.  He  wears  worn 
but  expensive  clothes,  cashmere  and  wool. 
His  eyes  are  tired,  remote. 

"I  filed  the  complaint,"  he  says  in  his 
quiet  voice.  "And  I  filed  it  on  behalf  of  all 
the  victims  of  Pinochet,  more  than  3,000. 
Not  just  Spaniards.  Because  in  crimes 
against  humanity,  there  are  no  differences." 


the  sole  act  of  slate-sponsored  Icimhi.iii 
to  have  claimed  lives  in  the  nation's  capital 

"There  was  never  any  doubt  in  my 
mind  whatsoever  who  was  behind  this," 
says  Moffitt,  who,  in  fact,  was  heard  scream 
injj  "Pinochet!  The  murderer!"  after  the 
bomb  went  oil'.  Then  he  watched  his 
young  wife  die  113  days  after  their  wed- 
ding. That  was  23  years  ago.  Moffitt  is 
now  a  stockbroker.  In  those  days,  though, 
he,  like  his  wife,  was  an  American  aide  to 
the  socialist  Letelier,  the  former  Chilean 
minister  of  defense,  then  living  in  exile  in 
Washington. 

One  reason  the  bereaved  husband  felt 
so  certain  of  the  identity  of  the  villain  was 
that  his  charismatic  boss  had  already 
voiced  suspicions  that  his  death  was  being 
discussed  by  the  military.  "I  have  another 
year  to  live,"  he  said— incorrectly.  He  and 
Ronni  Moffitt  died  just  a  few  weeks  later. 


"Pinochet  should  have 
plunged  a  dagger  through 
Garces's  heart." 


1 


ou  won't  tell  anyone  where  I  live  or 
work,  will  you?  I've  received  crank 
calls  lately,"  Michael  Moffitt,  now  47 
years  old,  begs  me.  The  assassination  of 
Letelier,  which  he  witnessed,  is  considered 


Murray  Karpen,  Ronni's  father,  explains 
the  aftermath  of  the  murders  to  me. 
"When  we  were  sitting  shiva,  one  of  the 
rabbis  was  there.  He  says,  'Murray,  I  know 
it's  no  consolation.  But  nothing  worse 
can  ever  happen  to  you  in  your  life.'" 

"I  remember  he  was  in  the  casket,  ly- 
ing there— we  had  to  see,"  recalls  42-year- 
old  Cristian  Letelier  of  his  last  moments 
with  the  shattered  corpse  of  his  father  in 
a  Washington,  D.C.,  funeral  home.  His 
mother,  Isabel,  spoke  to  him.  "Look  what 
they've  done  to  your  father.  And  never 
forget,"  she  commanded. 

Now  a  dark  and  muscled  actor  in  Los 
Angeles  who  has  his  own  kick-boxing 
show  on  Spanish  ESPN,  Cristian  Letelier 
falls  silent.  After  a  pause  he  leans  across 
the  table  where  we  are  sitting.  His  voice  is 
full  of  mockery:  "You  think  Clinton's  a 
bad  guy  because  he  got  a  blow  job  and  he 
smoked  pot?  If  you  want  to  see  a  bad  guy, 
we'll  show  you  a  bad  guy!  We've  got  a  real 
bad  guy. " 

But  what  could  the  Letelier  or  Moffitt 
relatives  possibly  do  to  Pinochet  in  1976? 
That  was  the  same  year  the  F.B.I,  helped 
the  Chilean  dictator  track  down  at  least 
one  opponent  to  his  regime  inside  the 
United  States,  as  a  recently  declassified 


government  document  reveals.  By  then, 
too,  it  was  known  to  the  Defense  Depart- 
ment, the  (  I  A  .  and  the  F.B.I,  that  Pino- 
chet had  formed  an  international  assassi- 
nation program  called  Operation  Condor, 
which  combined  the  intelligence  resources 
of  Chile,  Argentina,  Paraguay,  Bolivia,  and 
Uruguay  to  target  left-wingers. 

I  Pinochet  enemy  living  in  exile  in  Buenos 

II  Aires,  General  Carlos  Prats,  was  blown 
/ 1  up,  along  with  his  wife,  in  September 
1974.  In  October  1975,  Bernardo  Leigh- 
ton,  a  popular  former  vice  president  of 
Chile,  was  shot  in  the  back  of  the  neck  on 
a  street  in  Rome;  another  bullet  struck  his 
wife's  spinal  cord.  Operation  Condor  had 
global  ambitions.  "I  heard  Kissinger  was 
asked  if  Condor  could  open  a  Miami  of- 
fice, and  he  said,  'No!'"  says  Sam  Buf- 
fone,  a  lawyer  for  the  Letelier  and  Moffitt  , 
families.  (Kissinger  calls  this  incident 
"untrue.")  Nonetheless,  it  was  Operation 
Condor,  an  F.B.I,  cable  of  the  era  sug- 
gests, that  was  also  very  likely  responsi- 
ble for  the  Letelier  and  Moffitt  mur- 
ders in  the  United  States. 

Manuel  Contreras,  the  head  of  Pi- 
nochet's secret  police,  liked  to  call 
himself  "Condor  One"  in  his  tel- 
exes. In  1995,  19  years  after  the 
murders  of  Letelier  and  Ronni  Mof- 
fitt, Contreras  was  thrown  into  jail  in 
Chile  for  his  role  in  the  assassination 
conspiracy.  Recently,  from  prison,  he 
claimed  that  he  had  done  nothing  in  his 
entire  career  without  authorization  from 
Pinochet. 

As  it  turns  out,  the  Justice  Depart- 
ment—despite the  placating  statements 
coming  from  U.S.  attorney  general  Janet 
Reno— is  pretty  bashful  about  extraditing 
Pinochet. 

"We  don't  seem  to  want  him,"  says 
one  knowledgeable  Justice  official.  "I 
don't  think  we  have  enough  evidence  to 
hold  him." 

When  I  read  this  statement  to  Law- 
rence Barcella,  who  helped  prosecute  the 
Letelier  and  Moffitt  murders  in  Washing- 
ton, D.C.  (sending  dina  agent  Michael 
Townley  and  several  of  his  cohorts  to 
jail),  he  erupts  in  bitter  laughter.  "The 
evidence  against  Pinochet,  for  lack  of  a 
better  word,  has  accreted  over  the  years. 
It's  built  up,"  he  says.  "It's  laughable  to 
suggest  some  avenging  angel  went  roam- 
ing the  world  slaying  Pinochet's  foes  for 
a  three-year  period  without  his  knowl- 
edge." 

Doesn't  the  United  States  have  a  very 
good  murder  case  against  Pinochet?,  I 
ask  Artaza,  the  Chilean  ambassador  to 
England. 

Nodding  vigorously,  he  replies— surpris- 
ingly for  a  diplomat  who  is  opposed  to  for- 


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ntion     Ye   you 
may.  You  mas  have  a  case 

Bui  there  are  man)  in 
Washington  who  feel  thai 
the)  know  wh)  Pinochet  is 
safe  from  American  justice: 
it  h.is.  the)  say.  nothing  to 
do  with  lack  of  evidence. 

"  I  here's  still  a  lid  of 
secrecy,  .1  huge  denial; 
it's  a  denial  hacked  up  by 
the   United   States,"   says 
Joyce  I  lorman,  whose  desper- 
ate  search    for   her   husband. 
Charles,  an  American  journal- 
ist in  Chile  during  the  coup, 
became  the  subject  of  Missing, 
the   1982  Constantine  Costa- 
Gavras  film  with  Jack  Lem- 
mon.  Sissy  Spacek,  and  John 
Shea.  As  it  turned  out,  the 
reporter  had  been  killed  by 
Pinochet's  secret  police,  pos- 
sibly because   he   knew   too 
much  about  the   1973  putsch 
Joyce    Horman   tells   me,    "I 
lead  a  life  driven  by  a  25- 
year-old   murder   that  just 
doesn't  stop  happening." 

I  bout  the  true  nature 

II  and  background  of  Au- 
1 1  gusto  Pinochet,  the  son  of  a 
customs  agent  from  the  coastal 
city  of  Valparaiso,  not  all  that  much 
is  widely  known.  A  recently  declassified 
1973  U.S.  Defense  Intelligence  Agency  bi- 
ography (composed  when  Pinochet  was 
president  of  the  military  junta,  right  be- 
fore he  overthrew  Allende)  is  heavily  delet- 
ed. It  does  note  that  Pinochet  entered 
Chilean  military  life  at  18;  it  does  not 
mention  that  he  had  been  rejected  twice 
from  the  training  academy  as  too  physi- 
cally weak.  He  would  stay  in  his  chosen 
profession  for  the  next  65  years.  The  gen- 
eral is  not  especially  well  educated,  and 
speaks  no  foreign  languages.  Even  his 
Spanish,  as  William  Buckley,  who  inter- 
viewed Pinochet  about  seven  years  ago, 
observes  to  me,  "is  very  sort  of  parochial. 
It's  hard  and  guttural."  He  never  acquired 
much  subtlety,  once  remarking  that  the 
secret  mass  graves  of  his  victims  were  a 
fine  way  to  save  public  funds. 

What  Pinochet  did  have  from  the  be- 
ginning, as  his  supporters  and  friends 
note,  was  the  ability  to  delegate  authority. 
An  admirer  of  the  conservative  Milton 
Friedman,  he  brought  in  the  famous 
economist's  followers  (a  group  known  as 
"the  Chicago  Boys,"  because  Friedman 
hailed  from  the  University  of  Chicago). 
The  remodeling  of  the  Chilean  economy 
took  years  to  accomplish.  "And  now,  as 
you  know,  since  the  last  15  years  Chile  is 


the  biggest  success  story  in  Latin  Ameri- 
ca," Home  sums  up.  The  Pinochet  gov- 
ernment "created  a  middle  class  in  Chile. 
To  a  large  extent  this  is  what  Franco  was 
praised  for,  but  it  didn't  cost  a  million 
fives. " 

It  cost,  according  to  Chile's  own  figures, 
more  than  3,000  lives,  although  this  may 
be  a  conservative  estimate.  Eight  years  ago 
the  Chilean  National  Commission  on  Truth 
and  Reconciliation  put  out  a  report  detail- 
ing exactly  how  each  of  those  lives  was  ex- 
tinguished. In  no  instance,  however,  says 
Chile  expert  Virginia  Shoppee  of  Amnesty 
International  U.K.,  was  a  murderer  named. 

Speaking  before  the  seven  English  law 
lords  in  January,  Alun  Jones,  a  barrister 
representing  the  Spanish  government,  de- 
scribed some  of  these  tortures  in  under- 
stated fashion:  systematic  rape,  sodomy, 
beatings  of  prisoners,  and  their  revival  by 
hooded  doctors.  "On  occasion,  dogs  were 
used  in  a  sexual  way  against  the  prison- 
ers," said  Jones. 

It  is  the  contention  of  many  Pinochet 
allies  that  despite  the  dictator's  much- 
vaunted  acumen— "Not  a  leaf  moves  in 
this  country  if  I  am  not  the  one  who  is 
moving  it,"  he  once  declared— the  general 
knew  little  if  anything  of  these  atrocities 


during   his    17-year   rule     But 
this  portrait  of  an  insensate. 
nearly    comatose    dictator, 
exquisitely    isolated    from 
V  brutal  subordinates,  de- 
/'   lies  credibility.  The  case 
of  Sheila  Cassidy,  a  British 
doctor  tortured  three  times  in 
'    November  1975— electrodes  were 
attached  to  her  vagina  until  "I 
could  no  longer  think"-might 
reasonably  have  attracted  Pino- 
chet's attention,  for  example.  In 
the  first  place,  Dr.  Cassidy  had 
been  arrested  by  his  police  for 
having  tended  (with  decidedly 
mixed  emotions,  but  no  hesi- 
tation) the  wounded  leg  of  a 
Chilean  rebel,  whom  she  readi- 
ly describes  as  "a  nasty  piece 
of  work."  In  the  second,  news 
of  her  arrest  was  broadcast 
around  the  world. 

Dr.  Cassidy  is  61  now,  but 
looks  perhaps  40,  with  bright 
eyes  and  a  neat  cap  of  dark 
hair.  When  we  meet,  she  re- 
moves from  a  large  tote  bag 
three  teddy  bears  of  varying 
sizes,  and  places  them  on  our 
tiny  cafe  table.  "Because  I  like 
bears"  is  how  she  explains  the  in- 
vasion. But  probably  the  real  an- 
swer for  their  comforting  presence 
comes  later:  "Once  the  impossible  and 
unspeakable  happens,  you  never  again 
think  you  are  invulnerable,"  she  says. 

Despite  her  ordeal,  Dr.  Cassidy  is  in- 
credibly lucky.  She  was  never  raped;  she 
was  never  made  to  watch  a  child  or  a 
spouse  brutalized  in  front  of  her;  rats 
were  never  placed  in  her  vagina— which, 
she  says,  is  what  happened  to  less  fortu- 
nate captives  arrested  by  dina. 

She  is  alive  today  most  likely  because 
she  is  a  British  subject,  and  a  tremendous 
public  battle  for  her  return  took  place 
(Great  Britain  withdrew  its  ambassador 
from  Chile  in  protest  over  her  captivity). 
Even  so,  her  release  took  two  months. 

Is  there  any  indication  that  Pinochet 
knew  you  were  being  tortured  in  1975?,  I 
ask. 

"I'm  absolutely  certain,"  she  says,  "be- 
cause it  was  being  reported  back  to  him.  I 
mean,  I  was  a  very  hot  potato  at  the  time." 

Interestingly,  the  historian  Home  also 
feels  certain  Pinochet  was  aware  that 
atrocities  took  place.  In  fact,  he  says, 
the  dictator  told  him  as  much  in  an  inter- 
view in  the  presidential  palace  12  years 
ago.  It  was  an  unremarkable  office,  except 
that  there  was  a  Bible  by  the  dictator's 
side,  a  crucifix  on  the  wall. 

"Mr.  President,"  said  Home,  "the  French, 


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as  you  know  were  extremely  efficient,  ["hey 
won  thi  Battle  of  Algiers  through  the  use 
Bui  thai  cost  them  the  war." 
Pinochet  must  haw  pondered  the  obvi- 
ous implications  of  that  remark  foi  much 
ol  the  interview,  because  although  at  first 

lie  bristled,  insisting  to  his  questioner  that 

in  Chile  torture  was  unheard  of,  later  he 

offered  J  breathtaking  retraction:  "What 

evei  happens,  we  will  not  torture  again," 
he  said. 

When  Home  received  the  official  tran- 
script i>l'  the  interview,  however,  that  line 
was  altered.  Indeed,  throughout  his  long  ca- 
reer, Pinochet  would,  when  pressed  about 
past  atrocities,  flirt  with  candor,  alternate- 
ly confrontational  and  coy. 

"We  had  no  choice.  It  was  them  against 
us.  It  was  war,"  Pinochet  explained  eight 
years  ago  to  a  Latin-American  official  who 
had  lived  in  Chile  during  the  coup.  The 
general  gave  a  light  shrug.  "Now  we  have 
turned  the  page." 

For  years  the  Latin-American  official 
had  been  doing  his  best  to  avoid  meeting 
Pinochet.  Four  of  his  employees  had 
been  murdered  by  dina  after  the  putsch. 
He  says  he  was  astounded  by  the  casual, 
almost  offhand  remark.  But  he  had  to 
admit  that  the  general  had  turned  the 
page,  all  right.  Ten  years  ago,  Pinochet 
devised  a  fairly  original  endgame  for  an 
absolute  autocrat.  He  stepped  down  after 
losing  a  popular  election.  Until  last  year, 
however,  he  held  on 
to  his  role  as  chief  of 
the  armed  forces. 

Despite  his  dimin- 
ished status,  the  for- 
mer dictator  was  care- 
ful in  certain  impor- 


I     ■ 


lant  respects.  In   11>7X  a  genera]  amnesty 

was  conferred  in  I  nile    il  covered  all 

soils  of  heinous  crimes  committed  under 
Pinochet's  aegis.  Fxcepted  from  lliis  am- 
nesty, however  .is  a  result  of  U.S.  pres- 
sure were  the  murderers  of  Letelier  and 
Mofl'itt.  This  is  why  police  chief  (  on- 
treras,  who  ordered  those  killings,  is  now 
one  of  the  few  criminals  of  that  era  to 
find  himself  in  jail. 

I  ndy  McEntee,  the  41-year-old  chair- 
[1  man  of  Amnesty  International  U.K., 
/ 1  who  lives  in  London,  has  been  waiting 
for  Pinochet  since  1991.  The  first  time  the 
general  turned  up  in  England  (landing  by 
private  helicopter  at  the  airfield  of  British 
Aerospace,  recalls  McEntee),  no  real  ef- 
fort was  made  to  have  him  arrested.  "He 
took  us  by  surprise,"  McEntee  says. 

After  this  stealth  appearance,  however, 
the  human-rights  organization  began  rum- 
maging for  evidence  against  the  former 
dictator,  just  in  case  he  was  reckless 
enough  to  come  back.  Sure  enough,  there 
was  a  1994  return  visit,  which  prompted 
Pinochet's  watchers  to  contact  the  police 
as  well  as  the  attorney  general  and  New 
Scotland  Yard.  Inevitably,  Pinochet's  peo- 
ple learned  of  the  sudden  interest  his  vis- 
its had  sparked. 

"Pinochet's  advisers  began  seeking  le- 
gal advice,"  explains  McEntee.  What  they 
told  the  general  during  that  visit  abroad, 
he  adds,  was  ominous: 
"You'll  be  all  right  just 
now.  But  now  that  you're 
going,  it's  advisable  not 
to  come  back." 

McEntee  shakes  his 
head  in  wonderment. 
Despite  all  this  excel- 
lent counsel,  the  former 
dictator  returned  to  Britain  in  1995,  then 
again  in  1997,  and  even  in  1998,  when  a 
Spanish  judge  was  investigating  him  for 
murder.  On  Pinochet's  final  trip  to  Lon- 


"Once  the  unspeakable 
happens,  you  never  again 
think  you  are  invulnerable." 


>■ 


THE  DELICATE  PREY 

From  top:  former  secret-police  chief 

Manuel  Contreras,  left;  British  doctor 

Sheila  Cassidy  after  her  release  from 

a  Chilean  prison,  December  30,  1975; 

Spanish  lawyers  Juan  Garces  and  Manuel 

Murillo,  who  are  seeking  to  try  Pinochet. 


•  i£y 


don  the  Amnesty  chairman  in  Britain  and 
the  lawyer  Garces  in  Spain  wasted  no  time. 
"The  man  you  are  investigating,  My 
Judge,  is  in  London!"  an  excited  Garces 
told  the  Spanish  court  in  October. 

Thus  was  an  arrest  warrant  issued  by 
Spain  the  very  nation  where  the 
murderous  General  Franco  had  once 
ruled,  unopposed  and  unpunished  to  the 
end  of  his  days.  That  was  in  1975:  Pino- 
chet was  among  those  who  flew  to  Ma- 
drid to  pay  homage. 

Since  that  time,  history  has  reversed  it- 
self. International  law  and  prescribed 
codes  of  conduct  have  expanded,  espe- 
cially in  Europe,  often  overshadowing— in- 
deed, sometimes  erasing— the  claims  of 
national  sovereignty.  The  most  peculiar 
moments  arise.  In  the  ancient  House  of 
Lords,  past  a  mural  of  a  white-robed 
Queen  Elizabeth  I,  enemy  of  Spain,  past 
scenes  from  the  sorry  life  of  the  Spanish 
Catherine  of  Aragon  as  she  implored  a 
callous,  unmoved  Henry  VIII  on  her 
knees,  six  out  of  seven  British  judges  de- 
cide in  a  packed  courtroom  that  an  old 
Chilean  dictator  can  be  sent  to,  of  all 
places,  Madrid. 

"Only  in  Spain  is  this  kind  of  prosecu- 
tion possible,  for  a  variety  of  legal  rea- 
sons," Garces  says  with  considerable 
pride.  His  country,  he  explains,  is  now 
able  to  prosecute  "crimes  against  interna- 
tional law  committed  inside  Spain  or  out- 
side Spain,  by  Spaniards  or  non-Spaniards, 
independently  of  who  the  victims  were— 
Spaniards  or  non-Spaniards.  That  law 
was  voted  in  by  the  Spanish  Parliament 
in  1985." 

But  many  Chileans  remain  unmoved 
by  such  modern  legal  innovations.  Will 
Chile  face  another  civil  war  now  that 
Pinochet  is  captive?,  I  ask  Chile's  ambas- 
sador to  the  United  States. 

"I  cannot  say  this  even  if  it  will  hap- 
pen!," Ambassador  Genaro  Arriagada  replies 
sharply.  "What  is  it  you  want  me  to  say 
now?  We  cannot  go  to  the  rest  of  the  world 
and  say,  'Oh,  please,  save  our  weak  democ- 
racy!' We  must  die  saying,  'Oh,  nothing  will 
happen!'" 

But   neither  Amnesty   International 

nor  Garces  feels  the  smallest  apprehen- 
i  sion  about  the  worldwide  repercussions 
|    from  Pinochet's  arrest. 

"It  must  be  a  deterrent,"  McEntee 

insists  wryly.  "Or  at  least  it  has  to  be  a 
:    learning  aid." 

If  so,  then  it  is  for  a  skill  many  world 
leaders  are  learning  too  late.  After  the 
arrest  of  Pinochet,  there  were  demands 
in  Guatemala  for  the  arrest  of  General 
Efrain  Rios  Montt,  who  ruled  that  country 
from  1982  to  1983.  The  grounds:  genocide 
against  the  Mayan  people.   In  Nigeria, 

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;tering  now  on  the  brink  of  democracy, 
mital  and  anxious  military  is  reluctant 
give  up  the  reins  of  power,  precisely 
cause  many  of  its  officers  fear  a  similar 
e  to  Pinochet's.  In  France,  where  for- 
;r  Haitian  dictator  Jean-Claude  Duva- 
r  had  found  refuge,  a  Haitian-born 
otographer,  encouraged  by  the  arrest  of 
nochet,  has  started  a  committee  to 
ing  "Baby  Doc"  to  trial. 
In  other  words,  nothing  may  ever 
ain  be  the  same  for  any  head  of 
ite.  With  the  Pinochet  arrest, 
i  are  entering  into  difficult  le- 
1  territory,  without  borders. 
"There  are  no  legal  prece- 
nts  for  the  Pinochet  arrest," 
ys  Monty  Raphael,  a  Lon- 
>n  solicitor  who  specializes  in 
tradition.  "Nuremberg  isn't  a 
ecedent,  because  Nuremberg  was 
e  trial  of  citizens  of  a  vanquished  na- 
>n  by  an  international  tribunal  of  victors 
ter  a  war." 

Even  a  younger  brother  of  Ronni  Kar- 
m  Moffitt  struggles  now  with  the  arrest 
the  man  he  despises.  On  the  one  hand, 
ys  Harry  Karpen,  a  New  Jersey  lawyer, 
vil  deserves  to  be  punished."  On  the  oth- 
:  "The  world  is  not  made  up  exclusively 
Western  countries,  and  it  doesn't  take 
uch  to  overpower  guards  and  kidnap 
Western]  officials  and  try  them  some- 
lere  for  so-called  human-rights  abuses." 
He  goes  on  like  this  for  some  time; 
en  —across  the  phone  line— the  words 
Iter,  and  all  that  can  be  heard  is  a 
other's  sobs. 

|  inochet,  at  the  time  of  his  arrest,  was 
'  not  without  important  allies.  Watching 

the  TV  news  last  October  on  the  glori- 
is  Spanish  estate  in  Marbella  of  the  late 
r  James  Goldsmith  was  Robin  Birley. 
e  is  Goldsmith's  stepson,  the  son  of 
idy  Annabel,  and  a  devout  admirer  of 
nochet— so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  he  had 
nt  the  beleaguered  general  a  Fortnum  & 
[ason  hamper  at  the  clinic.  Like  so  much 
se  in  this  drama,  however,  circumstances 
grounding  this  gift  went  awry:  "I  was 
ally  disappointed  they  didn't  put  straw 

the  hamper,  but  those  horrible  poly- 
gene balls,"  Birley  tells  me. 

Pinochet's  "un-English,  very  shabby" 
rest  struck  him  even  more  forcefully, 
iley  turned  to  his  friend  Patrick  Robert- 
n,  a  Thatcher  protege,  who  was  seated 
:side  him:  "Look,  no  one's  going  to  have 
e  courage— you  must  do  something, 
nd  I'll  raise  some  money." 

To  date  almost  $4  million  has  been 
ised  by  interested  parties  for  the  public 
:fense  of  Pinochet,  $300,000  of  it  going 

Lord  Bell,  who  used  to  be  Thatcher's 
lblic-relations  man.  By  far  the  biggest 


donors  were  certain  Chilean  business- 
men—all of  whom  wish  to  retain  their 
anonymity.  The  pro-Pinochet  forces  are 
in  some  measure  hobbled  by  the  general 
himself.  Every  day  Pinochet  does  his  ex- 
ercises, pronouncing  himself  infinitely 
stronger:  "Siento  mas  fuerte,"  he  boasts, 
flexing  his  muscles.  But  talk  to  him  about 


"I  filed  the  complaint," 
says  Garces,  "on  behalf  of  all 
the  victims  of  Pinochet, 
more  than  3,000." 


refurbishing  his  problematic 
image,  say  his  allies,  and  the  old  man  is 
likely  to  snap:  "I  am  a  soldier.  Not  a 
propaganda  machine!" 

He  cannot  imagine  what  his  advisers 
want  of  him.  Recently,  for  example,  a 
Chilean  lawyer,  Fernando  Barros,  who  ad- 
vises him  frequently  and  without  cost,  ex- 
plained that  there  were  those  who  thought 


a  public  apology,  or  at  least  an  appeal  for 
the  world's  sympathy,  might  work  to  his 
benefit.  After  all,  Pinochet  is  old,  unwell, 
likely  to  return  to  Chile  one  day,  as  a  friend 
recently  reported  the  general's  saying,  "in  a 
wooden  box."  Even  should  he  be  packed 
off  to  Spain  for  trial  and  convicted,  it  is  un- 
likely he  will  ever  spend  a  day  in  jail  (the 
Spaniards  don't  incarcerate  anyone  over  75). 
"The  dignity  of  Chile  and  its  army  is 
superior  to  my  family  or  my  life!"  re- 
torted Pinochet,  appalled  at  the  no- 
tion of  debasing  himself  by  solicit- 
ing sympathy.  "Never!" 

"I  told  him,  'Look,  My  Gen- 
eral, I  understand,'"  says  Barros. 
"'But  this  will  surely  mean  you  are 
not  coming  back  alive  to  Chile.  You 
are  not  going  back  alive  to  Chile.'" 
"If  this  happens,  this  happens," 
Pinochet  replied. 

The  old  dictator  is  alternately  de- 
pressed and  philosophical,  resigned  and 
thoughtful.  It  is,  oddly,  a  state  of  mind  he 
shares  with  Murray  Karpen,  the  former 
delicatessen  owner  whose  daughter  was 
blown  up  in  Washington,  D.C.,  by  Pino- 
chet's men.  Like  so  many  people  around 
the  world,  Karpen  experienced  a  variety 
of  emotions  when  Pinochet  was  arrested. 
But  paramount  among  these  was  one. 
"There  is  a  God,"  he  tells  me.  D 


f\nne  \\Jilson  Z>cl±ae •- 

invites  you  to  set  your  spirit  free 

Living  in  Process 

Basic  Truths  for  Living 
the  Path  of  the  Soul 


"A  vital  and  precious  guide. .  .A  plea 
for  honesty,  love,  compassion,  and 
respect  for  the  human  inner  process.' 
— Frederick  Franck,  author  of 

The  %en  of  Seeing   and  To  Be  Human 
Against  All  Odds 

"Living  in  Process  has  the  power  to 
change  the  way  our  society  thinks." 
— Margot  Cairnes,  author  of 

Approaching  the  Corporate  Heart 

To  hear  Anne  Wilson  Schaef  discussing 
Livingin  Process,  call  BOOKTALK.  at 
818-788-9722.  code  4658 


^p —  -^     A  Ballantine  Wellspring  Hardcovt 
vV^O     The  Ballantine  Publishing  Group 


-randomhouse.com/BB/ 


r\mc  [iii  his 
for  Living 
iiii  path  or 

llll.  Sdl  1. 


An  kie  Wi  I  son  3cliA.ej 

Author  "ItfelnKnwtMimlBttmDet  I 


•  »*■  ;*  r»  \imf 


I  N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


MRS.  ASTOR  REGRETS 

Seated  between  two  bores  at  a  dinner  party?  Getting  an 

earful  of  office  gossip?  With  all  due  humility,  a  lady 

of  impeccable  manners-please  call  her  Mrs.  Astor-suggests  some 

rules  to  put  the  "polite"  back  into  polite  society 

BY  BROOKE  ASTOR 


"Don't  walk  with 
'  the  pointed  end  of  an  umhn 
sticking  out  from  under 
your  arm,  which  could  easily  p. 
the  eye  of  a  child,  or  rip  offal 
of  a  lady' s  dress." 


f  this  were  the  Utopian  world  that  as  a  child  I  supposed  it 
was,  I  would  not  be  having  a  word  on  manners.  Manners,  I 
was  told,  are  instinctive— they  come  from  a  good  heart  and  a 
desire  to  reach  out  to  one's  fellow  man.  No  one  should  have 
to  be  taught  to  be  nice  to  people.  I  am  not  assuming  the  role 
of  a  Master  of  Etiquette.  I  have  met  peasants  in  Italy,  plan- 
tation workers  in  Jamaica,  dirt  farmers  in  our  own  West, 
who  were  born  with  a  natural  courtesy,  so  it  is  humbly  that 
I  write  this  small  monograph,  hoping  that  it  will  be  helpful,  even 
though  here  and  there  I  cannot  resist  indulging  in  a  bit  of  humor. 

BEHAVIOR  AT  A  DINNER 
hen  you  are  invited  out  to  dinner,  you  are  asked  because 
your  host  or  hostess  likes  you  and  thinks  that  you  will  add 
to  the  evening.  You  may  be  asked  because  you  are  a  very 
important  person— a  politician,  a  novelist,  newly  rich,  a  media  ty- 


coon, a  beautiful  woman,  or  a  famous  wit.  Whoever  you  are, 
and  no  matter  how  important  your  host  thinks  you  are  or  how 
important  you  think  you  are,  there  is  still  only  one  reason  to  be 
there:  you  are  supposed  to  add  to  the  evening. 

You  may  have  had  a  frightful  fight  with  your  spouse  before 
you  left,  or  your  best  beau  may  have  let  you  down— too  busy  to 
lunch  with  you  tomorrow— or  your  children  may  have  been  rude, 
or  your  dog  may  have  bitten  you.  Forget  these  disasters;  they  are 
part  of  life.  Nothing  is  meant  to  be  too  easy.  You  must  take  these 
incidents  in  stride— tonight  you  are  dining  with  friends. 

It  is  in  the  worst  possible  taste  to  be  a  sullen  guest  at  a  party- 
even  if  you  are  seated  between  two  bores,  or  between  people  you 
have  never  been  able  to  talk  to.  The  host  or  hostess  does  not 
know  your  problems,  nor  were  you  intentionally  put  between  two 
bores.  Unless  possibly  you  did  that  to  them  and  they  are  taking 
their  revenge.  If  this  is  the  case,  they  won't  get  it  if  you  appear  to 


VANITY     FAIR 


ILLUSTRATIONS     BY      HILARY      KNIGHT 


JUNE     1999 


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persona  I 

network 


kT&T  Personal  Network  is  available  in  most  areas.  Additional  $  1 4.95  monthly  fee  applies  for  internet  telephone  access  and  other  charges  and  taxes  may  apply.  Other  terms  and  conditions  apply.  I0y  rate  applies  to  qualifying 
&T  Calling  Card  calls  and  direct-dialed  long  distance  calls  from  home  within  the  U.S.;  I  Of  international  rate  applies  for  these  calls  when  placed  to  Canada,  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  border  cities  of  Mexico.  Conditions  appty 
qualify  for  one  bill  and  for  AT&T  Personal  Network.  Wireless  service  requires  credit  approval,  activation  fee.  an  annual  contract  a  digital  multi-network  phone  and  subscnption  to  AT&T  Wireless  Services  long  distance  for  your 
reless  calls.  Billing  address  must  be  within  AT&T  Personal  Network  Home  Service  Area  Roaming  charge  is  6(ty  a  minute  outside  your  home  area  These  wireless  rates  are  not  available  for  credit  card  and  international  calk. 
Wess  airtime  measured  in  full  minutes  and  rounded  up  to  the  next  full  minute.You  must  remain  an  AT&T  residential  long  distance  customer  with  a  combined  bill  for  AT&T  residential  and  wireless  services  to  remain  on  AT&T 
rsonal  Network's  wireless  plan.  Full  terms  and  conditions  are  in  the  AT&T  Wireless  Services  Welcome  Guide  or  Calling  Ran  Brochure.  Offer  may  not  be  combined  with  any  other  promotional  offers.  ©  1 999  AT&T 


Soeidv 


"hit  difficult  in 

urn  society  today,  when 

meeting  new  people,  to  know 

jii\i  who  th> 


'^v,, 


be  having  a  good  time.  If  your  placement  is  bad  unknowingly, 
then  you  are  simply  doing  what  is  expected  of  you. 

My  advice  is,  if  you  cannot  add  to  the  evening,  you  should 
stay  home  and  listen  to  the  news.  Perhaps  you  will  be  cheered  up 
by  listening  to  news  about  victims  of  rape,  murder,  aids,  and 
economic  disaster.  The  news  is  always  useful.  You  can  congratu- 
late yourself  that  you  are  safely  in  bed. 

INTRODUCING  PEOPLE 

It  is  difficult  in  our  society  today,  when  meeting  new  people,  to 
know  just  who  they  are.  When  I  was  young,  when  you  were  in- 
troduced to  someone,  you  were  called  by  your  last  name: 
"Miss  Smith,  this  is  Mr.  Jones."  Today,  it  is  simply,  "George,  this 
is  Jane."  I  find  myself  being  introduced  to  young  people,  young 
enough  to  be  my  grandchildren,  as  "Brooke."  There  is  no  differ- 
ence between  being  18  or  80!  I  have  grown  accustomed  to  this, 
but  there  is  no  civility  to  it.  We  might  as  well  all  be  called 


"It  is  in  the  worst 

possible  taste  to  be  a  sullen  guest 

at  a  party — even 

if  you  are  seated  between 

two  bores. " 


"lido."  Far  worse  is  to  be  introduced  by  first  name  to  someone 
whom  you  have  avoided  lor  years,  or  to  someone  you  have  heard 
all  about  and  don't  particularly  want  to  know.  Instantly,  these 
people  have  the  same  relationship  to  you  as  an  old  and  valued 
friend.   The  pleasure  of  being  able  to  say  to  someone  you  like, 

"Please  don't  call  me  Mrs.  Smith  anymore,  call  me  Mary,"  has 
vanished,  along  with  the  real  feeling  of  warmth  and  fellowship 
that  lent  meaning  to  such  a  gesture. 

As  I  have  said,  we  are  all  Fidos  now,  so  why  not  wear  dog  col- 
lars with  our  names  engraved  on  them?  We  might  have  licenses  too. 

HOW  MEN  HAVE  CHANGED 

Thirty  years  ago,  men  still  wore  hats,  which  were,  in  a  way,  a 
symbol  of  deference  to  women.  When  a  man  saw  a  woman  he 
knew  in  the  street,  he  raised  his  hat  and  smiled,  even  if  he  was 
with  someone  else.  If  he  had  been  by  himself  and  joined  the  wom- 
an, he  would  keep  his  hat  off  while  with  her  and  would  put  it 
back  on  only  if  she  said,  "Do  put  your  hat  on.  It's  frightfully 
cold,"  or,  if  it  was  hot,  "The  sun  is  so  hot."  A  man  always  took 
his  hat  off  in  an  elevator  if  a  woman  was  in  it,  and  that  was  de 
rigueur,  regardless  of  the  class,  creed,  or  color  of  the  lady. 

In  going  in  to  a  formal  dinner,  a  man  was  given  the  name  of 
the  lady  he  was  to  sit  next  to,  so  he  could  seek  her  out  when  din- 
ner was  announced  and  offer  her  his  arm.  When  they  arrived  at 
table,  it  was  his  assignment  to  pull  out  her  chair  and  see  that  she 
was  seated  comfortably.  Why  then  do  we  now 
have  an  endless  cocktail  hour— and  I  really 


\   ; 
#  0  t)  ^  \ 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     1999 


SHE  WAS  HERALDED  AS  HOLLYWOOD'S  FIRST 


HEN  VILIFIED  FOR  PLAYING  THE  PART 

he  was  the  sweet  little  jazz  baby  from  Brooklyn  that  became  America's  first  carefree  sex 
Ttibol  —  a  one-woman  revolution  who  shattered  social  and  sexual  taboos.  At  the  tender 
ye  of  19,  she  was  turning  out  a  movie  every  three  weeks  —  and  if  you  believed  the 
imors,  a  lover  every  two.  But  her  delicious  accessibility  made  her  an  easy  target  for 
rolessional  jealousies  and  a  maelstrom  of  libel  and  abuse.  With  her  spirit  broken  at 
5,  Clara  Bow  retreated  into  the  life  of  a  recluse.  Now,  Turner  Classic  Movies  charts 
le  meteoric  career  of  the   "It"  girl  -  from  the  street  to  stardom  to  seclusion. 


>&tfr 


A   TCM    WORLD    PREMIERE    DOCUMENTARY 
Narrated  By  Courtney  Love 


MONDAY,  JUNE  14th,  8PM  (ET] 


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mean  an  hour,  in  some  houses  an  houi  and  .1  half?  rhe  reason  is 
ih. a  the  men  during  that  houi  talk  business  they  make  deals  and 
catch  up  i>n  the  market  01  the  latest  political  gaffe  and  pay  no 
attention  to  the  women 

l  attribute  these  changes  entirely  to  women.  They  are  compet- 
ing in  the  business  work),  anil  mosi  of  them  think  that  they  are 
smaitei  than  the  men  they  work  with.  The  men.  even  if  they  ap- 
pear to  like  the  women,  resent  this  [fa  woman  is  holding  forth 
ai  the  office  and  giving  her  advice  forcefully,  whether  it  is  taken 
or  not,  why  then  should  men  tip  their  hats  to  her  in  the  street? 

If  a  woman  wants  style  in  an  office,  she  should  dress  simply 
and  as  well  as  she  can  afford.  If  she  has  an  important  position, 
she  should  be  nice  to  everyone  working  in  the  same  office,  in- 
cluding the  younger  women  secretaries.  She  should  have  lunch 
with  them  occasionally,  and  once  a  year  have  a  little  women's 
"office  party"  in  her  apartment.  If  she  becomes  private  secretary 
to  the  boss,  she  must  never  forget  where  she  started.  If  she  be- 
comes a  vice  president,  she  should  be  even  nicer. 

Office  gossip  can  be  as  irritating  and  boring  as  social  gossip, 
and  the  easiest  way  to  avoid  it  is  to  smile  at  everyone  and  make 
everyone  feel  that  you  were  once  a  secretary  yourself.  As  for  the 
boss,  if  he  looks  twice  at  a  pretty  girl,  he  will  be  accused  of  sex- 
ual harassment,  so  he  must  watch  his  step  very  carefully.  The 
poor  fellow:  when  his  secretary  steps  into  his  office,  he  usually 
keeps  the  door  open  and  his  voice  down.  It  is  safer. 

WALKING  ON  A  STREET 

There  is  nothing  that  humans  can  do  in  which  they  can  totally 
ignore  manners.  Take  walking  down  the  street.  You  should 
choose  one  path  and  stick  to  it.  Don't  wander  all  over  the 
sidewalk,  walking  slowly  one  moment  and  rushing  the  next. 
Don't  walk  with  the  pointed  end  of  an  umbrella  sticking  out 


"////  woman  n  holding 
forth  at  tbi  <>///<<  and gtuingbet  advia 

/lint  I  It  I  I  \,  11 1  nil  tit  it  /1  /<  1 1 1 11 

or  not,  iiln  //mi  should  mi  11  tiji  ///hi  Ihih 

III  III!  Ill  tin    l/lil/''" 


from  under  your  arm,  which  could  easily  put  out  the  eye  of  a 
child,  or  rip  off  a  piece  of  a  lady's  dress.  Confine  your  jogging  to 
a  park.  Don't  loiter  on  the  street  corner  after  the  light  has  turned 
green— thereby  becoming  an  obstacle  for  those  in  a  hurry.  If  you 
wear  a  huge  knapsack  on  your  back,  keep  away  from  the  shop- 
windows.  You  are  obstructing  the  view  of  others  and  risking 
breaking  a  window. 

If  you  see  a  person  with  a  white  stick,  it  means  that  they  are 
either  blind  or  nearly  blind.  Stop  and  help  them  cross  the  street. 
Smile  at  a  young  mother  pushing  a  baby  carriage.  Give  some 
money  to  a  beggar.  Stop  and  talk  to  an  old  person 
in  a  wheelchair.  These  small  cour- 
tesies will  give  you  an  upbeat 
feeling  which  will  help  you  as 
you  continue  your  walk  down 
the  street.  □ 


"Manners  are 
instinctive— they  come  from 

a  good  heart  and  a 

desire  to  reach  out  to  one's 

fellow  man." 


148  VANITY     FAIR 


U  N  E     19  9  9 


[n   a    ytrf  life    (  wbh    a   yt*{   \mf.  I    left  vd[  a    feAvf   wM&n  in   *ll  *f  ^*in  af  fv&we,  <j\f 
(i^U|-  64"  ^^  AhWj  Km^  a^aU^  -ja   'fht    \Mt&  cl  £\{eai .  A  ^^  dtf$  ne\  5pM  ei^jm\  mew. 


JIk.  &  VHit  J*£t  t/  WA4-  /hUdCl  aUcia£  MAwa^-  TAHCfcu 


1  "J  D I  k  ■■ 


Enjoy  Fmlandia  responsibly. 

Wandia  Vodka  40%  ALC./VOL.  Imported  by  Brown-Forman  Beverages  Worldwide.  Louisville.  KY  ©1999  ALKO  GROUP  LTD.  To  give  Fmlandia  Vodka  as  a  gift,  call  1-800-SPIR1TED 


GUCCI 

timepieces 
neiman  marcus 


Name:  Brittany  Murphy.  Age:  21.  Has  epitomized 
dysfunctional  youth  in:  Amy  Heckerling's 
Clueless  and  Fox's  King  of  the  Hill  as  the 
voice  of  Luanne.  Soon  to  play  a  dysfunctional 
adult  in:  Gary  Fleders  Piece  of  My  Heart, 
as  the  doomed  rocker  Janis  Joplin,  and  Drop 
Dead  Gorgeous,  with  Denise  Richards  and 
Kirsten  Dunst.  Your  performance  as  Tai  in  Clueless 
was  quite  convincing.  Was  that  the  real  Brittany 
we  saw  on  the  screen,  or  a  tour  de  force  of  Method 
acting?  "I  was  16  years  old,  so  it  was  basically 
my  awkward  years  captured  on  celluloid 
forever.  At  the  time  I  was  quite  insecure." 
How  performing  a  Gershwin  song  at  her  friend's 
wedding  got  her  the  Joplin  role:  "I  sang  'Love  Is 
Here  to  Stay'  at  my  manager  Joanne 
Colonna's  wedding.  The  head  of  casting  for 
Paramount  happened  to  be  there  and 
she  sent  me  the  script  the  next  day.  I  found 
out  that  the  wedding  day  was  also  the 
day  Joplin  died!"  Sounds  rather  cosmic. 
What's  the  strangest  thing  about  incipient  fame? 
"I'd  say  to  be  driving  down  the  street 
and  seeing  your  big  head  on  a  billboard- 
it's  pretty  freaky."  — krista  smith 


J  N  E     19  9  9 


photograph    BY     PAMELA     HANSON 


VANITY     FAIR  IS] 


(IIIIIIOS 


Entrepreneur  [ngrid 
Casares,  as  sleek 
is  her  Nokia  6160 
cell  phone,  is  no 
stranger  to  people's 
cravings  for  night- 
life. Her  club  Liq- 
uid, restaurant,  Joia, 
and  most  recent 
venture.  Bar  Room 
(whose  staff  wear 
Donatella  Versace- 
designed  uniforms),  have 
made  Casares,  34,  a  celebrity 
in  her  own  right.  Business  is 
foremost:  No.  1  is  her  corpo- 
rate office  in  her  native  Mi- 
ami, where  all  her  establish- 
ments are  located.  (She  also 
has  another  club,  Liquid 
Lounge,  in  Palm  Beach.)  Her 
phone,  too,  is  her  office.  "I 
live  on  my  phone,"  she  claims. 
"People  say  it  is  another  organ  of  mine." 

The  first  call  of  the  day  is  to  New  York  PR.  wunderkind  Lizzie  Grubman  (4).  '"We  talk  about 
business,  and  then  we  talk  about  gossip,  which  is  always  important  in  the  morning."  Madonna  (7) 
is  "probably  the  second  call  of  the  day— we  coordinate  our  yoga  classes  together."  No.  6  is  friend 
and  business  partner  Chris  Paciello,  and  No.  2  is  protege  and  D.J.  genius  Victor  Calderone.  Someone 
who  knows  a  thing  or  two  about  artist  management  is  Sony  Music  head  Tommy  Mottola  (9),  one 
touch  away  for  business  advice,  as  is  another  music  heavyweight,  Guy  Oseary  (8),  Madonna's 
partner  in  Maverick  records.  The  peripatetic  threesome  have  nicknamed  themselves  "Road 
Dogs,"  often  arranging  impromptu,  far-flung  rendezvous.  Good  thing,  then,  that  Casares  is  well 
connected  in  more  ways  than  one.  — darryl  brantley 


No.  2 

on  Cosares's 
speed  dial  is 
protege  and  D  J 
Victor  Calderone. 


'    Party  line: 

Nightlife 
!    impresario 
I    Ingrid  Cask 
talking  on 
her  Nokia  6160  in 
New  York. 


For  fashion 

emergencies, 

Casares  is 

one  touch  away 

from  the  Versace  store. 


Maverick  records 
co-owned  by  Case 
close  friends  Guy 
Oseary  and  Modonn 


Helen  Thomas 

U.P.I.  White 
House 

correspondent 
and  author, 
Front  Row  at  the 
White  House 

Seasons  of  Her  Life, 

by  Ann  Blackmail 

(Scribner).  "A  superb  book,  about 

Madeleine  Albright— a  great 

woman  who  is  holding 

one  of  the  most  powerful  jobs  in 

history— that  will  make 

the  country  realize  what  an 

accomplished  woman 
is  in  charge  of  foreign  policy." 


Night-Table 
Reading 

James  Palumbo 

nightclub  owner 

Corelli's  Mandolin, 
by  Louis  De  Bemieres 

(Vintage). 
"A  great  romantic  novel 

with  a  lot  of  humor." 


James  Brady 

author,  The  House  That 
Ate  the  Hamptons 


For  Cosares's  mo 

business  (and 

gossip),  P.R.  agent 

Lizzie  Grubman  (4). 


Tom  Sachs 

artist 

Air  Guitar:  Essays 

on  Art  &  Democracy, 

by  Dave  Hickey 

(D.A.P.). 

"His  analysis  ofChet  Baker, 

who  'wanted people  to 
understand  what  he  played: 

he  didn  't  care  a  damn 

if  they  understood  how  he 

lived, '  made  me  cry." 


Breakout:  The  Chosin 
Reservoir  Campaign,  Korea  1950, 

by  Martin  Russ  (FrommJ. 

"An  epic  account  of  Marines  fighting 

the  Chinese  Army — a  cold, 

savage  war  in  which  I  fought  and 

which  haunts  me  still. " 


VANITY     FAIR 


UCCI 

ENVY 

for  men  and  women 

dstrom    bloomingdale' 


Caffeinated. 


©1999  Volkswagen.  1-800  DRIVE  VWor  WWW.VW.COIT1 


The  new  Turbo. 


Drivers  wanted.  {x$\ 


mttmmtm  m 


From  top:  a  panoramic 

photographic  composite  of  Apollo  16 

astronaut  Charles  Duke  moonwalking  near  the 

120-foot-wide  Plum  Crater,  April  16-27,  1972; 

Ernest  Hemingway  hunting  for  pheasant 

in  Sun  Valley,  Idaho,  1941;  designer  Raymond 

Loewy's  original  sketch  and  finished  Exxon  logo, 

1966;  Pebbles,  Wonder  Woman,  and  Zorro 

Pez  dispensers  and  career  flowcharts  of  Bill 

Bixby,  Robert  Urich,  and  Harry  Morgan 

from  Do  You  Remember  TV? 


n  insidery,  millennium-ending  magnum  opus  as  big  as  a  sea  turtle, 
KURT  ANDERSEN'S  Turn  of  the  Century  (Random  House)  satirizes  end- 
of-the-era  big  businesses— from  showbiz  to  Wall  Street,  from  the  New 
York  media  to  the  Pacific  Northwest  computer  industry. 

Also  this  month:  FREDERICK  VOSS  and  MICHAEL  REYNOLDS'S  Picturing 
Hemingway  (Yale)  presents  iconic  portraits  and  photographs  of  the  man 
who  was  Papa.  Tlie  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World  (Knopf)  collects  DAVID  GATES'S  mar- 
velously  true-to-life  tales  of  characters  undone  by  life.  In  The  View  from  Alger's  Window 
(Knopf),  TONY  HISS  employs  his  father's  letters  from  prison,  plus  family  ephemera,  to 
cast  new  light  on  his  controversial  paterfamilias.  A  motorcycle  gang  of  radical  nuns  are 
just  some  of  the  unforgettable  characters  populating  KIT  REED'S  newest  story  collection, 
Seven  for  the  Apocalypse  (Wesleyan  University  Press).  Former  Joseph  McCarthy  boost- 
er WILLIAM  F.  BUCKLEY  JR.  taps  into  his  past  for  the  historical  novel  Tlie  Redhunter  (Lit- 
tle, Brown).  The  inimitable  STEPHEN  FRY,  star  of  Jeeves  and  Wooster  and  Wilde,  offers 
his  shockingly  funny  and  sad  gay-coming-of-age  autobio,  Moab  Is  My  Washpot  (Ran- 
dom House).  Apollo  astronauts  shoot  the  moon  (literally)  in  MICHAEL  LIGHT'S 
Full  Moon  (Knopf).  Don't  let  choosing  the  proper  birdbath  or  suitable 
stone  cherub  pitch  you  into  a  dither— seize  MARTHA  BAKER'S 
indispensable  Garden  Ornaments  (Clarkson  Potter).  Immedi- 
ately acquaint  yourself  with  No  One  You  Know  (Simon  & 
Schuster),  the  collected  works  of  mordantly  funny  New  Yorker 
cartoonist  BRUCE  ERIC  KAPLAN.  AMANDA  DAVIS  makes  a  promis- 
ing entrance  in  her  fiction  debut,  Circling  the  Drain  (Rob  Weis- 
bach).  Writers  such  as  Jane  Smiley  and  Bill  McKibben  take  on  the 
quintessentially  American  art  of  consumption  and  our  impossible 
yearning  for  more,  more,  more  in  ROGER  ROSENBLATT'S  anthology 
Consuming  Desires  (Island  Press).  Opie,  Mork,  Charo:  MICHAEL  GITTER, 
SYLVIE  ANAPOL,  and  ERIKA  GLAZER  push  all  the  Gen-X  buttons  in  Do 
You  Remember  TV?  (Chronicle).  GORE  VIDAL'S  Sexually  Speaking 
(Cleis  Press)  outs  George  Washington's  homosexuality,  Norman  Mail- 
er's feminism,  and  the  sapphic  tendencies  of  Eleanor  Roosevelt.  Director  PAUL 
MAZURSKY'S  memoir,  Show  Me  the  Magic  (Simon  &  Schuster),  bewitches  with 
tales  from  the  trenches  alongside  big  guns  such  as  Orson,  Woody,  and  Bette.  The 
multi-dimensional  life  of  landscape  architect  Frederick  Law  Olmsted,  father  of 
New  York  City's  Central  Park  and  the  grounds  of  the  United  States  Capitol,  is  ex- 
cavated in  WITOLD  RYBCZYNSKI'S  A  Clearing  in  the  Distance  (Scribner).  Raymond 
Loewy  and  Streamlined  Design  (Universe/Vendome),  by  PHILIPPE  TRETIACK, 
salutes  the  distinctly  American  designer  responsible  for  the  classic  imagery  of  the 
Coca-Cola  bottle,  the  Greyhound  bus,  and  Lucky  Strikes.  Room  to  Grow  (St. 
Martin's),  edited  by  CHRISTINA  BAKER  KLINE,  offers  essays  on  the  harrowing  and 
joyful  art  of  parenting  by  contemporary  writers  such  as  Larry  Brown  and 
Francine  Prose.  CHRISTOPHER  OGDEN'S  Legacy  (Little,  Brown)  takes  on  the  An- 
nenberg  clan,  one  of  America's  wealthiest  families.  Literary  impresario  KEN  FOSTER 
shows  what  he's  made  of  in  his  first  short-story  collec- 
tion, The  Kind  I'm  Likely  to  Get  (Quill/Morrow).  DR. 
ISADORE  ROSENFELD  lays  out  ways  to  suspend  the  aging 
process  in  the  boomer-friendly  read  Live  Now,  Age 
Later  (Warner).  At  long  last,  a  self-help  book  one 
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Lapham's  Rules  of  Influence  (Random  House),  in 
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such  as  "Flattery  cannot  be  too  frequently  or  too 
recklessly  applied.  Think  of  it  as  suntan  lotion." 
Oh,  do  slather  me  . . .  — elissa  schappf.ll 


estinalio 


iam  Thacker  (Hugh  Grant)  lives  a  dull 
i  His  travel  bookstore  is  notorious  for 
ick  of  prosperity,  and  his  love  life  is 
-existent.   But  when  the  world's  most 
ous  movie  star  unexpectedly  enters  his 
things  will  never  be  the  same  again. 


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For  Anna  and  William,  their  lives  will  never  be  the  same. 
Neither  will  yours. 


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ia  Roberts  and  Hugh  Grant  in  Notting  Hii.i.: 


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VANITY  FAIR 

J  UN  I    19  9  9 


m   \ 


after  24  films  an^tcommanding  $20  million 
I  Julia  Roberts  has  learned  one  thing:  slue,  can  never  escape 
the  ravening  tabloid  scrutiny  of  everything  from  her  bra  size  to     ^ 
her  salad  dressing.  At  an  East  Village  bowling  alley,  America's  most  sought-after 
actress  shows  NED  ZEMAN  how  she  deals  with  "Julia-mania," 
and  engages  in  a  frank  discussion  of  "canoodling,"  her  reputation  for  being 
difficult  on  the  set,  and  the  ironic  challenge  of  her  role  in  Richard  Curtis 's 
heralded  romantic  comedy  Notting  Hill,  due  out  this  month, 
as  a  knockout  movie  star  besieged  by  thKpress 


NUTS  ABOUT  JULIA 

Julia  Roberts  contemplates 

a  stuffed  squirrel  at 

Tribeca  Studios,  New  York  City, 

February  16,  1999. 


ilhJuli 


1a 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     MARIO     T  E  S  T  I  N  O    •    S  T  Y  L  E  D     BY     LORI     GOLDSTEIN 


mIu-11  sgmc  cul 
liiilid  to  eontradii  t 
rt'poVts  in  the  nudia  that 
she  hud  heen  dillkuli 
tn  work  with  during  tfu: 


prit  like  you, 
ire  going  to  |j 


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ping:  Julia  Roberts,  in  the  East 
age's  trendy  Bowlmor  Lanes, 
(welling  with  a  young  man  who  looks 
king  like  the  leggy  stunner's  eurrent 
l,  hunky  TV  stud  Benjamin  Bratt . . . 


story  begins, 


ill  Julia  Roberts  stories  must  begin,  with 
mattering  of  lies  based  on  half-truths 
tiifying  nothing.  Consider  the  item, 
ich  happens  to  be  factually  sound— 
berts  was  in  the  bowling  alley,  was  with 
lan  other  than  her  boyfriend,  and  was, 
ase  the  tabloid  term  of  art,  canoodling, 
it  the  definition  for  "canoodling"  is  ar- 
te and  exquisitely  vague  merely  proves 
point,  since  canoodling  means,  in 
ence,  whatever  you  want  it  to  mean, 
it's  what  makes  it  such  a  useful  word  in 
ments  like  this,  when  the  world's  most 
ious  actress  is  standing  in  Lane  23,  cup- 
g  her  breasts. 

\  disclaimer:  she  is  doing  this  for  il- 
lative purposes  only— something  about 
iv,  using  a  little  tape  and  a  lot  of  inge- 
ity,  she  conceals  her  chest  while  film- 
nude  scenes  (which  she  films  rarely, 
:  that's  another  story).  She  is  simply 
ng  helpful;  she  is  a  helpful  person. 
r  example,  it  was  her  idea  to  come  here 
the  first  place,  because  she  feared  that 
:'d  been  "boring"  during  an  earlier  meet- 
,  She  bowls  early  and  often,  perhaps 
:h  a  certain  level  of  irony.  Usually  she 
iccompanied  by  her  boyfriend,  but  not 
s  time. 

She  is,  if  not  an  accomplished  bowler, 
;pirited  one.  She  spends  much  of  the 
ernoon  howling  with  joy,  jumping  up 
d  down,  and  tugging  the  arm  of  her 
wling  companion.  (You  read  it  here 
it:  Julia  Roberts  is  a  toucher.)  She  is 
aring  Levi's,  a  snug  blue  top,  and  rent- 
shoes.  Her  hair  is  pulled  back,  her 
:e  creaseless.  She  curses  a  blue  streak, 
other  words,  she's  the  consummate 
wling  date  America's  date.  "Loosen 
,  honey,"  she  keeps  saying.  "You're  bowl- 


ing like  you've  got  a  gun  at  your  back." 
An  hour  later,  the  celebrity  radar  kicks 
in,  and  bowlers  are  staring.  "I  can  see  it 
now,"  Roberts  says,  drawing  her  thumb 
and  forefinger  across  an  imaginary  banner 
headline.  "Sources  say  the  lovebirds  ca- 
noodled all  night.  Sources  say  there  was 
major  canoodling." 

And  here  it  must  be  said  that  Roberts, 
whose  reputed  canoodlings  have  launched 
a  thousand  clips,  has  a  grudging  respect 
for  the  verb  she  helped  resurrect.  "I  just 
like  to  say  it,"  she  explains,  batting  her 
eyes  for  effect.  "Want  to  come  over  for 
some  canoodling?"  She  first  saw  the  word 
in  the  New  York  Post,  which  along  with 
its  less  excitable  playmate,  the  New  York 
Daily  News,  has  detailed  the  minutiae  of 
her  domestic  life  with  a  level  of  tedious- 
ness  that  borders  on  breathtaking.  Bomb- 
shells include: 

Julia  Roberts  buying  three  bracelets  with 
the  words  "hot,"  "fat,"  and  "crazy"  at  Shi 
on  Elizabeth  Street. 

—New  York  Post 

Julia  Roberts  dipping  into  Howdy  Do, 
the  campy  collectible  store  on  E.  Seventh. 
She  passed  over  the  book  Michael 
Jackson  Was  My  Lover  but  coveted  the 
Dream  Stud  Colorforms  game. 

—New  York  Daily  News. 

She  disputes  most  tabloid 
reports  with  a  kind  of  gal- 
lows humor  that's  fairly 
gentle,  considering  that  her 
private  life  has  for  years 
been  a  matter  of  public  rec- 
ord—the tabloids  being  our 
own  little  Hollywood  Mich- 
elin  informing  us  of  her  preferred  brassiere 
(Maidenform,  34B),  her  most  unsightly 
body  region  (armpits),  and  the  heartening 
news  that  she  has  indeed  been  inoculated 
for  German  measles.  "Never  been  there," 
she'll  say  when  asked  about  the  latest  gos- 
sip. Or:  "Oh,  yeah— I  do  that  all  day." 

At  31,  after  24  films,  a  few  notable  ro- 
mantic and  cinematic  misfortunes,  and 
nearly  a  decade  of  full-blown  "Julia- 
mania"  (13  People  covers),  Roberts  has  fi- 
nally embraced  the  first  rule  of  celebrity: 
Even  if  you're  one  of  the  most  powerful 
actresses  in  Hollywood,  even  if  you  com- 
mand $20  million  per  movie,  even  if  most 
directors  would  set  their  hair  on  fire  to 
work  with  you— even  if  it's  all  true,  you 
will  never,  ever  outrun  the  tabloids.  "The 
trick,"  she  explains,  fiddling  with  her  shoe 
(size  8!),  "is  to  ignore  them." 

She  surveys  the  place  and  says,  "Let 
me  ask  you  this:  are  you  sitting  here  in 


this  bowling  alley,  worried  that  one  of 
these  people  works  for  a  newspaper  and 
that  tomorrow  they're  going  to  say  that  I 
was  sitting  here  with  some  young  guy  and 
that  it  wasn't  Benjamin  Bratt?" 

Pretty  worried,  she  is  told. 

But  she  just  laughs  and  laughs,  because 
the  great  thing  about  being  Julia  Roberts 
(aside  from  the  fact  that  she  gets  to  be 
Julia  Roberts)  is  that  when  something  bugs 
her  she  can  get  the  best  revenge  possible: 
she  can  star  in  a  Hollywood  movie  about 
it.  That  would  be  the  lovable  romantic 
comedy  Notting  Hill,  due  out  this  month, 
co-starring  Hugh  Grant  and  written  by 
the  gifted  Englishman  Richard  Curtis 
(Four  Weddings  and  a  Funeral).  Roberts 
plays  a  knockout  actress  who  is  deified  by 
the  media,  dates  a  loutish  movie  star,  finds 
love  while  shooting  a  film,  sees  the  affair 
splashed  all  over  the  tabloids,  goes  into 
seclusion  amid  scurrilous  rumors,  wrestles 
with  The  Price  of  Fame,  and  ultimately 
transcends  it.  In  media  circles,  one  can  al- 
ready detect  the  clattering  of  itchy  key- 
board fingers:  "The  Autobiography  of 
Julia  Roberts." 

To  which  Roberts  cheerfully  responds, 
"I  think  that  is  the  most  pedestrian,  bor- 
ing line  you  can  draw.  If  people  can't  sit 
and  just  appreciate  the  movie  for  what  it 
is— a  movie  written  by  Richard  Curtis  and 
not  about  we— then  they  shouldn't  be  writ- 
ing about  the  movie." 

So,  anyway  . . . 

The  annual  dinner  to  support  a  Yeshiva 
system  serving  more  than  8,000  boys  and 
girls  in  Williamsburg  is  usually  held  in 
the  National  Guard  Armory  on  Marcy  Ave. 
in  Brooklyn.  It  was  shifted  to  the  Jacob 
Javits  Convention  Center  because  the 
cavernous  military  building  is  being  used 
to  shoot  the  movie  Stepmom,  starring 
Julia  Roberts. 

"WJw  is  Julia  Roberts?"  asked  one  rabbi. 

—New  York  Daily  News, 

December  17,  1997. 

Tnvariably,  press  accounts  about 
Roberts's  formative  years  read 
like  World  War  I-era  Teletype 
missives:  nervous  tomboy  from 
quaint  Smyrna,  Georgia;  played 
Elizabeth  Dole  in  a  high-school 
mock  election;  father,  acting 
coach  Walter  Motes,  died  in  1976; 
mother,  Betty  Motes,  teaches  drama  in 
Smyrna;  older  sister  Lisa  is  an  actress  in 
New  York;  feisty  older  brother,  Eric,  also 
acts.  (Roberts  is  a  stage  name  that  Julia. 
Eric,  and  Lisa  took.) 

The  reason  that  this  portion  of  a  Julia 
Roberts  profile  is  always  so  maddeningly 


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"The  actual  story"  of  how 
ioberts  and  current  boyfriend 

Benjamin  Bratt  met 
s  calamity-filled  and  hilarious 
and  wonderful." 


oblique  is  that  her  family  never  talks  to  re- 
porters about  her.  Don't  read  anything 
into  that— aside  from  Eric,  who  is  famous- 
ly estranged  from  Julia,  the  family  gets 
along  nicely.  Every  now  and  again,  a  re- 
porter will  show  up  in  Smyrna,  trolling  for 
fresh  material.  Never  works.  Roberts  pre- 
fers it  that  way,  and  she  is  ever  vigilant. 
"Mom,"  she  will  begin,  "you  just  have  to 
say,  'No  comment.'  If  you  say,  'I  don't 
really  want  to  talk  about  Julia,'  they'll 
turn  around  and  report  that  you  said,  'I 
really  don't  want  to  talk  about  Julia.'" 

It's  been  this  way  since  1988, 
when  Roberts  co-starred  in  the 
sleeper  Mystic  Pizza,  her  break- 
through. She  was  19  and  fresh 
off  a  couple  of  low-budget,  no- 
where movies,  Blood  Red  and 
Satisfaction,  and  was  about  to 
crack  the  big  leagues  as  a  dia- 
betic fiancee  in  Steel  Magnolias  (1989), 
the  girly  southern  melodrama.  By  1990, 
after  coolly  holding  out  for  a  no-nudity 
clause,  she  was  starring  alongside  a  reviv- 
ified Richard  Gere  in  Pretty  Woman,  the 
Citizen  Kane  of  hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold 
movies.  Roberts  was  filming  her  second 
star  vehicle,  the  thriller  Sleeping  with  the 
Enemy,  when  celebrity  beckoned— produc- 
ers hovering,  agents  calling  from  the  Coast, 
the  whole  bit.  The  location  was  Abbeville, 
South  Carolina  (population:  5,200). 

"I  think  the  local  theater  was  still  play- 
ing Star  Wars  for  the  first  time,"  Roberts 
recalls.  "They  had  no  palpable  awareness 
of  what  was  going  on  with  me."  But  in  an 
atmosphere  reminiscent  of  Michael  Jor- 
dan's rookie  season,  when  the  young  phe- 
nom  was  forced  to  collect  the  balls  after 
practice,  the  crew  remained  studiously  un- 
fazed.  "I  have  to  take  my  hat  off  to  you 
because  the  film's  doing  so  well,"  a  crew 
member  told  Roberts,  who  recounts  the 
moment  with  a  kind  of  wistfulness.  "I  just 
thought  Pretty  Woman  sucked.  I  thought, 
Who's  this  girl  that's  coming  in  to  play 
this  role?  She  sucked. " 

Early  1991  was  a  small  riot  of  adora- 
tion, magazine  covers,  and  cash— Pretty 
Woman  and  Sleeping  with  the  Enemy 
grossed  a  combined  $278  million,  Rob- 
erts's per-picture  asking  price  jumped  to 
$7  million,  and  the  trades  declared  her 
the  only  female  star  who  could  "open"  a 
picture  at  the  time.  "She's  really  Miss 
America,  isn't  she?"  says  Roberts's  friend 
Rupert  Everett,  who  co-starred  in  her  1997 
comedy  My  Best  Friend's  Wedding.  "She's 
got  all  the  qualities  that  people  want  an 
American  woman  to  have." 

Each  film  premiere  she  attended  became 
something  out  of  continued  on  paoi      ■ 

VANITY     FAIR      I 


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• 


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ROYAL  MATCH 


taken  of  Jordan's  Queen 

Noor  and  her  late 

husband.  I\in»  Hussein. 

The  picture  was  shot  at  their 


River  in  Man  land. 

January  5.  1999-one 

month  before  the  kin» 

died  of  cancer. 


The  death  of  Jordan's  King  Hussein  from 

cancer  in  February  left  gaping  holes  both  in 

the  delicate  political  structure  of  the  Middle  East  and 

in  the  heart  of  his  beautiful,  American-born  wife,  Queen  Noor, 

who  now  carries  a  nation's  grief  into  sleepless  nights  and  poignant  dreams. 

At  the  palace  in  Amman,  LESLIE  BENNETTS  talks  with  Noor  about  the 

transformation  of  a  free-spirited  girl  named  Lisa  Halaby  as  she  navigated  a 

whirlwind  1978  courtship  with  the  thrice-married  Islamic  monarch,  years  of 

vicious  criticism  from  her  adopted  people,  and  painful  rumors 

about  her  son's  place  in  the  royal  succession 


BY    HERB     RITTS 


only  question   I 


can't  answer  is  'How  are  you?,'"  Queen 
Noor  tells  me  with  a  rueful  smile  on  my 
first  day  in  Amman.  "I  don't  know  how  to 
answer  that." 

So  how  is  she?  "Soldiering  on,  as  I 
must,"  she  says.  "Right  now  I'm  taking  each 
day  as  it  comes.  It's  new  territory." 

A  statement  like  that  is  typical  Queen 
Noor:  pious,  dutiful,  self-contained.  The 
official  40-day  mourning  period  since 
the  death  of  her  husband,  King  Hussein 
of  Jordan,  is  nearly  over,  and  the  queen 
has  maintained  an  unshakable  composure 
throughout  as  she  received  thousands  of 
visitors  offering  condolences.  By  day,  she 
looks  so  serene  she  appears  almost  beatif- 
ic, and  her  dignity  and  self-discipline  have 
won  high  marks  from  Jordanians.  "People 
have  completely  changed  in  their  view  of 
her,"  one  wealthy  Amman  woman  says. 
"Before,  people  resented  her:  'She'll  never 
be  Arab!'  Now  they're  in  awe  of  her  and 
the  way  she's  handled  herself  during  the 
condolences.  They  say,  'She's  more  of  a 
queen  than  if  she  was  born  a  queen!'  She 
portrayed  Jordan  very  well  to  the  rest  of 
the  world,  and  to  Jordanians  that's  very 
important." 

The  queen's  private  reality  is  another  sto- 
ry; her  emotional  state  is  painfully  variable. 
"It  changes  all  the  time,"  she  says  quietly. 
"The  feelings  come  and  go  every  day." 

When  she  sleeps,  she  relives  her  hus- 
band's harrowing  months  of  cancer  treat- 
ment. "I  dream  this  struggle  every  night," 
she  confesses.  "We're  still  in  the  midst  of 
fighting,  my  husband  and  I.  We're  togeth- 
er, with  all  that  hopeful,  faithful  spirit. 
Then  the  realization  sets  in  as  one  sur- 
faces from  the  dream." 

I  wince,  and  she  quickly  reassures  me, 
as  if  I  were  the  one  who  needed  to  be 
consoled.  "It's  not  traumatic,"  she  says. 
"It's:  Oh,  we've  moved  beyond  that  strug- 
gle; now  there's  a  new  challenge." 

When  we  start  talking  about  denial  as 
a  coping  mechanism,  she  says  wryly, 
"There  is  obviously  an  aspect  of  that  in 
all  of  this.  But  that  presumes  that  at 
some  point  I  crash  and  burn.  I  couldn't 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


be  living  in  denial,  because  I'm  with  peo- 
ple every  day  who  make  tins  real  for  me. 
I  have  to  transcend  my  own  personal 
feelings  to  comfort  them,  and  that  helps 
me  to  focus  outside  myself." 

Maintaining  such  self-control  is  nothing 
new.  "All  these  years,  I  have  had  to,"  she 
says.  "In  my  husband's  position,  he  al- 
ways felt  that  his  responsibility  was  to  pro- 
ject only  the  most  positive,  constructive, 
caring,  loving,  comforting  spirit  to  every- 
one he  encountered,  no  matter  what  he 
was  feeling  inside.  It  was  easy  to  see  that 
that  was  one  way  of  giving  the  best  of 
oneself  to  others,  and  also  it  happens  to 
be  a  very  peaceful  way  to  live  your  life— to 
whatever  extent  you  can  do  it." 

When  I  comment  that  only  a  saint 
could  consistently  meet  such  a  standard, 
she  says  hastily,  "I  don't  think  of  myself 
as  a  saintly  person.  I'm  talking  about  a 
formula  that  works  in  my  life,  that  I  have 
learned  from  my  husband's  example,  and 
that  I  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  find 
a  measure  of  peace  in  at  some  of  the 
most  agonizing  times  of  my  life."  She  al- 
lows herself  a  small  sigh.  "But  it  is  work." 

And  Queen  Noor  works  hard  at  it.  "I 
didn't  say  I  don't  have  tears,  but  I  try  to 
keep  those  to  myself  as  much  as  I  can  so 
I  don't  burden  others,"  she  says.  "So  I 
keep  my  own  agony  to  myself.  But  there 
are  moments  ..." 


e  are  having  lunch 
on  a  sunny  patio  out- 
side her  white-walled 
limestone  palace,  Bab 
Al  Salam,  which  is 
on  the  outskirts  of 
Amman.  Agony  not- 
withstanding, today  she  looks  radiant.  All 
morning  she  received  visitors  in  the  main 
parlor,  whose  coffee  table  holds  a  velvet 
box  containing  the  satin  Jordanian  flag  that 
was  draped  over  His  Majesty's  coffin,  along- 
side his  red-and-gold  Koran  and  an  array 
of  elaborately  engraved  daggers.  Reed  thin, 
she  wore  a  formfitting  black  suit  with  a 
skirt  that  swept  her  ankles,  with  elegant 
black  stiletto  heels  peeking  out  from  under- 
neath; her  most  visible  concession  to  Is- 
lamic tradition  was  the  white  yanis,  or 
scarf,  that  covered  her  head.  Gracious  and 
warm,  as  if  she  had  all  the  time  in  the 
world,  Queen  Noor  shook  every  hand. 
"She's  so  beautiful!"  marveled  one  Ameri- 
can woman  moving  through  the  receiving 
line  to  meet  her.  "We're  the  same  age,  but 
she  looks  fabulous!" 

For  lunch  alone  with  me,  the  47-year- 
old  queen  had  changed  into  black  jeans 
and  an  embroidered  twinset  that  showed 
her  lithe  body  to  best  advantage.  With 


honey-blond  hair  framing  her  glowing  fa 
and  her  eyes  sparkling  a  bright  cerulea 
blue,  she  could  be  a  Western  movie  st 
rather  than  an  Islamic  queen. 

But  four  days  later,  after  the  privatj 
family  ceremonies  marking  the  end  of  th( 
mourning  period,  the  change  is  shocking 
Her  face  is  haggard,  pale,  and  deeplj 
lined;  she  looks  10  years  older.  Even  ha 
eyes  seem  bleached  and  colorless,  her  eye 
lids  puffy.  When  I  ask  if  she's  been  sleep 
ing,  she  looks  guilty,  as  if  I  had  jus  I 
unearthed  a  shameful  secret.  "I  haven'!- 
slept  in  three  nights,"  she  admits. 

Although  her  tone  is  devoid  of  self-pitj  h1 
such  a  personal  admission  is  rare.  Si]  :  ; 
months  ago,  when  I  first  spent  time  wit! 
Queen  Noor  in  the  United  States,  she  wa  I 
working  hard  to  maintain  her  usual  im  if 
penetrable  facade.  The  simplest  questioi  p 
elicited  numbing  streams  of  verbiage.  Ill  1 
quire  about  her  feelings  and  you  would  ge  :  l 
a  monologue  on  Middle  Eastern  politics  P 
or  on  Western  misconceptions  about  th  p 
Islamic  religion,  or  on  her  efforts  to  en  f 
courage  Jordanian  development— anything 
but  her  own  personal  experience.  Her  sen  ■ 
tences  are  interminable  and  use  as  man;  : 
multisyllabic  words  as  possible.  Despifj  m 
their  complexity,  they  parse  correctly-  b 
Queen  Noor  is  so  deliberate  about  all  sh< :  I 
does  that  sloppiness  in  speech  would  b<  1 
as  unacceptable  here  as  in  everything  else  ki 
It  is  clear  that  Queen  Noor  uses  languagi  m 
as  a  shield,  both  to  prevent  her  real  feel :  In 
ings  from  leaking  out  and  to  prevent  other  p 
from  discerning  them.  "Here's  a  womai  1 1 
who's  been  thrust  into  an  incredibly  diffi  ■ 
cult  role,  under  the  microscope  all  th  m 
time,  so  she's  schooled  herself  how  to  be  I  i 
have  in  a  way  to  protect  herself,"  says  Mai  i 
ion  Freeman,  a  former  classmate  front  sn 
Concord  Academy  and  Princeton  who  no\  It 
owns  a  software  company  with  her  hus  lit 
band.  "She  can't  afford  to  get  into  trouble:  m 

But  the  last  year  has  been  a  torturou  k 
emotional  roller-coaster  ride  for  the  queei  to 
and  her  four  children,  and  the  immens  h 
loss  she  just  suffered  has  left  her  mor  to 
vulnerable,  and  therefore  more  accessible  bi 
than  usual.  A  scant  12  months  ago,  th  m 
family  celebrated  their  final  moments  o  fcp 
transcendent  happiness  with  a  gala  at  thei  m 
60-acre  English  country  estate  near  As  m 
cot,  honoring  both  the  20th  wedding  ar  si  H 
niversary  of  the  king  and  queen  and  th  L 
18th  birthday  of  their  elder  son,  Princ  L 
Hamzah.  The  guest  list  reflected  the  glan  L 
orously  eclectic  nature  of  their  friendships  Oil 
from  Prince  Charles,  King  Constantine  c  igj 
Greece,  and  King  Juan  Carlos  of  Spain  tj 1* 
Harrison  Ford,  Barbara  Walters,  and  Osca  I  gj 
de  la  Renta  to  Queen  Noor's  closes  iy 
friends  from  school,  back  when  they  kne\  kg 

JUNE     I  9  9    \ 


"I  try  to  keep  tears  to 
tyself  as  much  as  I  can," 
|        says  Queen  Noor. 


only  as  a  tall,  stunning 
terican  girl  who  looked  as  if 

had  just  stepped  out  of  a 
ph  Lauren  ad. 
Jut  within  weeks,  King  Hus- 
i  was  diagnosed  with  a  re- 
rence  of  the  non-Hodgkin  's 
iphoma  he  had  battled  suc- 
sfully  in  1992,  when  he  lost 
idney.  In  July  he  began  in- 
>ive  chemotherapy,  followed 
a  debilitating  bone-marrow 
isplant  at  the  Mayo  Clinic 
Rochester,  Minnesota,  with 

queen  always  by  his  side; 
;n  she  slept,  it  was  in  the 
;pital  room  next  to  his.  No- 
lber  marked  the  king's  63  rd 
hday;  by  December,  he  had 
n  pronounced  in  remission, 
1  in  January  the  king  and 
:en  returned  home  to  Jor- 
l  to  a  tumultuous  welcome. 
>r  us,  he  was  God  on  earth," 
:  Jordanian  told  me.  "We 
ught  he  was  immortal." 
[n  a  freezing  rain,  King 
ssein  rode  triumphantly 
ough  the  streets  of  Am- 
n,  standing  up  through  the  sunroof  in 
car,  waving  to  the  hysterical  throngs, 
t  within  days  his  fevers  had  returned 
I  he  was  back  at  the  Mayo  Clinic  for  a 
:-ditch  effort  to  save  his  life.  A  second 
le-marrow  transplant  failed,  and  by  the 
ie  the  king  was  flown  home  to  Jordan 
the  last  time,  he  was  heavily  sedated 
i  on  a  respirator.  He  died  on  February 
mding  an  extraordinary  47-year  reign, 
"ing  which  he  had  become  one  of  the 
gest-ruling  monarchs  in  the  world  and 
/eloped  his  fledgling  kingdom  into  a 
idem  nation  that  had  won  respect  as 

most  stable  country  in  the  Middle 
st.  His  subjects  were  devastated;  even 
opponents  wept,  and  two  people  tried 
commit  suicide  in  Amman  on  the  day 
died,  one  of  them  successfully. 
Only  days  earlier,  King  Hussein  had 
>cked  the  Jordanian  people  by  abruptly 
inging  his  line  of  succession.  For  34 
irs  King  Hussein's  brother  Prince  Has- 
i  had  been  the  crown  prince,  next  in 
i  for  the  throne.  Unlike  Hussein,  Has- 


A  MATCH 

MADE  IN  AMMAN 

Above,  the  future  queen 
accompanies  King  Hussein  on 
a  drive,  1978.  Left,  the 
couple  in  the  desert  in  1994. 


san  was  never  considered  a  charmer— "No 
one  seriously  dislikes  him,  but  he's  a  big, 
fat  pompous  bore  who  speaks  with  a  pre- 
tentious British  accent,"  one  Middle  East 
expert  told  me— but  at  least  he  was  a 
known  quantity. 

In  the  final  days  of  his  life,  King 
Hussein  wrote  his  brother  a  letter 
that  was  both  sorrowful  and  angry; 
he  accused  those  around  Prince 
Hassan,  if  not  the  prince  himself, 
of  disloyalties  that  included  having 
spread  vicious  gossip  about  Queen 
Noor.  The  Jordanian  people  had  always 
expected  Prince  Hassan  to  be  their  next 
monarch;  they  also  knew  that  the  hand- 
some and  charismatic  Prince  Hamzah  was 
his  father's  favorite  son.  "The  king  saw 
himself  in  Hamzah,"  says  Mohammad  Al- 
Adwan,  a  former  chief  of  protocol.  "I  think 
he  always  had  Hamzah  in  mind." 

But  to  almost  everyone's  astonishment, 
King  Hussein  announced  that  his  eldest 
son,  Prince  Abdullah,  would  succeed  him 


instead,  with  the  understand- 
ing that  Prince  Hamzah 
would  become  the  new  crown 
prince.  This  decree  prompted 
the  usual  round  of  rumors: 
that  the  Americans  had  engi- 
neered it;  that  the  Israelis  had 
engineered  it;  that  the  British 
had  engineered  it.  Although 
the  37-year-old  Abdullah  was 
a  career  army  officer  who  had 
become  the  country's  chief 
military  envoy,  the  Jordanian 
people  had  rarely  heard  about 
him.  "We  don't  know  him," 
one  Jordanian  banker  told  me 
worriedly.  But  now  Abdullah 
is  king,  and  Hamzah,  who  is  studying  at 
Sandhurst,  the  British  military  college  once 
attended  by  his  father  and  Winston  Chur- 
chill, is  next  in  line  for  the  throne. 

Right  now  all  four  of  Queen  Noor's 
children  are  in  Amman.  Prince  Hamzah 
has  flown  home  for  the  private  family 
ceremonies  marking  the  end  of  the  offi- 
cial mourning  period,  and  his  younger 
siblings— 17-year-old  Prince  Hashim,  16- 
year-old  Princess  Iman,  and  13-year-old 
Princess  Raiyah— have  been  here  since 
their  father's  death,  although  they  will 
soon  return  to  schools  in  the  United 
States.  Two  days  after  the  mourning  peri- 
od ended,  Queen  Noor  made  her  first 
public  appearance,  visiting  children  in  the 
cancer  wards  of  three  Amman  hospitals. 
Unexpectedly,  when  we  returned  to  Bab 
A!  Salam,  King  Abdullah  had  stopped  by 
to  meet  with  the  queen  behind  closed 
doors.  As  we  finally  sit  down  to  a  late 
lunch,  she  seems  unruffled,  but  a  few  days 
later— when  King  Abdullah  names  his 
own  wife,  a  beautiful  28-year-old  Palestin- 


N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


ian  named  Rania,  "Hci  Majesty,  the  great 
Queen'    I  wonder  whether  that  was  when 

news  thai  she  was  being  rel- 
LatUS  of  queen  mother. 

Now  a  is  late  afternoon,  and  she  and  I 
are  in  a  COZy  sitting  room  off  the  mam 
parlor,  next  to  a  crackling  fire.  It  has  been 
a  bleak,  unseasonably  cold  spring  day, 
with  intermittent  rain  something  drought- 
stricken  Jordan  needs  desperately.  As  we 
mala  our  way  through  a  leisurely  lunch  of 
lentil  soup,  hummus,  and  crunchy  pista- 
chio pastries,  the  queen  scarcely  picks  at 
her  food.  Despite  the  lack  of  sleep,  she 
began  her  day  on  the  treadmill,  as  usual, 
but  she  still  looks  bleary-eyed  and  rav- 
aged. Suddenly  there  is  a  staccato  rapping 
on  the  French  doors  that  lead  to  the  lawn. 
(Although  it  is  springtime,  little  else  in  this 
desiccated  city  is  green,  but  the  queen's 
palace  is  surrounded  by  thick  carpets  of 
emerald  grass  and  tinkling  tiled  foun- 
tains—perhaps the  ultimate  luxury  in  an 
arid  land  that  is  90  percent  desert.) 

We  look  up,  startled.  Outside  the  doors 
are  Prince  Hamzah  and  Prince  Hashim. 
The  queen  brightens;  by  now  we  have  been 
talking  for  hours,  and  she  thinks  her  chil- 
dren have  come  to  claim  her.  But  no:  the 
princes  confess  that  they  were  momentari- 
ly locked  out  of  the  house,  and  just  looking 
for  a  way  back  in.  Both  are  good-looking 
young  men,  but  Prince  Hamzah  is  taller,  his 
features  more  finely  chiseled.  He  is  clearly 
a  heartthrob;  already  Jordanian  matrons 
squeal  and  quiver  with  excitement  when 
they  pass  his  car,  as  if  he  were  a  rock  star. 

For  months,  one  of  the  lead- 
ing rumors  swirling  around 
the  palace  was  that  Queen 
Noor  was  lobbying  her  hus- 
band to  name  Prince  Ham- 
zah as  his  successor.  Since 
Noor  was  King  Hussein's 
fourth  wife,  and  he  already  had  eight  chil- 
dren when  he  married  her  in  1978,  the  dy- 
namics of  this  particular  royal  family  are 
byzantine  even  without  the  question  of 
succession,  which  raised  palace  intrigue 
to  Shakespearean  proportions. 

It  had  always  been  clear  that  there  was 
no  love  lost  between  Queen  Noor  and 
Prince  Hassan's  wife,  Princess  Sarvath, 
who  are  widely  believed  to  loathe  each  oth- 
er. During  the  long,  anxious  months  of  the 
king's  illness,  Prince  Hassan's  court  was 
blamed  for  a  scurrilous  whispering  cam- 
paign that  revived  outlandish  but  persistent 
rumors  about  the  American-born  Queen 
Noor:  that  she  had  had  an  illegitimate 
child;  that  the  child  was  black;  that  she 
was  an  extravagant  spender  who  squan- 
dered millions  Of  CONTINUED   ON    PAGE    223 


VANITY     FAIR 


* 


QUEEN  OF 

llll   DESEKI 

,.v.  fciiKo  she  married 

Kinv  Hussein,  in  197K. 

Jordanians  have  intensely 

scruiiiii/id  Queen  Moor, 

mIid  looks  more  like  a 

Hollywood  slarlrl 

ili. in  an  Islamic  queen. 

Photographed   " 

r\l;i 


SAN  (ill  I  SI   MIOI' 

III.    I'VllmilS      In.UjJfcft,   llllc, 

<  liajmian,  l*aliu,  <£|wsi',  . louts, 
ami  (>il|iam    h.uitit  u|t  while 
sl(ixitiii);  their  lirst  lilm,   W  A«n 
for  Stiiiietliiiiii  <  oiuphrcty  /)///<•( <■«>, 
ill  ll)fi  Oiltlh,  ii(^9PO*k in  drau- 


y 


/ 


Monty  Python's  Flying  Circus  made  its 

it  on  the  BBC  three  decades  ago,  when  five 

mum  Britons — Graham  Chapman,  Terry 

Jones,  John  Cleese,  Michael  Palin,  and  Eric  Idle, 

who'd  met  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge — and  one 

American,  Terry  Gilliam,  took  the  concept  of  silly 

to  new  and  glorious  heights.  In  an  excerpt 

from  DAVID  MORGAN'S  forthcoming  oral  history, 

Monty  Python  Speaks!,  the  comedy  troupe's 

surviving  members  talk  about  everything  from  the 

genesis  of  their  famous  "Dead  Parrot"  sketch  to 

the  late  Chapman's  alcoholism  to  the  mysterious, 

ineffable  chemistry  of  their  collaboration 


I 


X. 


E 


r*r 


• 


^^^^ 


**,. 


his  revolution  was  televised.  When 
the  six  members  of  Monty  Python  embarked  on  their  unique 
collaboration  30  years  ago,  they  were  reacting  against  what  they 
saw  as  the  staid,  predictable  formats  of  other  television  comedy 
programs.  What  they  brought  to  their  audience  was  writing  that 
was  both  highly  intelligent  and  silly.  The  series  Monty  Python's 
Flying  Circus— which  premiered  in  Britain  in  1969  and  five  years 
later  in  the  United  States— combined  visual  humor  with  a  quirky 
style,  and  featured  boisterous  performances  that  seemed  to  cele- 
brate the  group's  creative  freedom. 

But  what  made  the  show  extraordinary  from  the  very  begin- 
ning was  its  total  lack  of  predictability,  its  reveling  in  a  stream- 
of-consciousness  display  of  nonsense,  satire,  sex,  and  violence. 
The  very  flow  of  action  and  ideas  was  the  most  potent  source  of 
humor  on  Monty  Python.  It  was  not  about  jokes;  it  was  really 
about  a  state  of  mind.  Three  decades  after  the  group's  premiere, 
even  after  the  routines  have  been  memorized,  the  shows,  films, 
books,  and  recordings  remain  funny.  Through  their  uncompro- 
mising approach  to  comedy  in  various  media  the  Pythons  left  a 
mark  on  popular  culture  that  continues  to  be  felt. 

The  group  consisted  of  five  Englishmen— Graham  Chapman, 
John  Cleese,  Eric  Idle,  Terry  Jones,  Michael  Palin— and  one 
American,  Terry  Gilliam: 

•  Chapman,  after  struggling  for  much  of  his  adult  life  with  alco- 
holism, died  in  1989  of  throat  cancer.  Born  in  Leicester— his  fa- 
ther was  a  policeman— Chapman  attended  Cambridge  and  after 
graduation  continued  to  study  medicine  before  fully  committing 
to  a  career  in  comedy.  He  and  his  longtime  male  companion 
had  an  adopted  son  who  died  in  1992.  As  Monty  Python's  de 
facto  straight  man,  Chapman  played  King  Arthur  in  Monty 
Python  and  the  Holy  Grail,  Brian  in  Monty  Python's  Life  of  Bri- 
an, and,  on  television,  a  recurring  army  colonel  who  would  in- 
terrupt proceedings  and  declare  them  "too  silly." 

•  Cleese  escaped  a  projected  career  in  law  when  he  accepted  a 
job  writing  jokes  for  the  BBC.  The  son  of  an  insurance  sales- 
man (who  had  changed  the  family's  surname  from  Cheese), 
Cleese  was  born  in  Weston-super-Mare  and  attended  Cam- 
bridge with  Chapman.  Apart  from  Monty  Python  he  has  writ- 
ten and  starred  in  the  television  series  Fawlty  Towers,  the  film 
A  Fish  Called  Wanda,  and  its  sequel,  Fierce  Creatures.  He  and 
his  third  wife  divide  their  time  between  London  and  Santa 


Excerpted  from  Monty  Python  Speaks!,  by  David  Morgan,  to  be 
published  this  month  by  Spike/Avon  Books  Inc.;  ©  1999  by  the  author. 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


Barbara;  be  has  two  daughters  from  his  earlier  marriages.  Hf " 
best-known  Monty  Python  roles  include  the  Minister  of  Sill 
Walks  and  the  man  trying  unsuccessfully  to  return  a  dead  pjr 
rot  to  a  pet  store. 

•  Gilliam  was  born  in  Minnesota  and  raised  in  Los  Angeles.  H  L 
early  careers  as  a  magazine  illustrator  (he  contributed  to  Mi 
co-founder  Harvey  Kurtzman's  short-lived  Help!)  and  an  a*  jj( 
agency  copywriter  in  New  York  City  somehow  pointed  him  t  y« 
ward  creating  the  surreal  animated  sequences  that  became  i;.o 
group  signature.  Away  from  Monty  Python  he  has  had  an  extrenj  B 
ly  successful  career  as  a  film  director  (Brazil,  The  Adventures .  f 
Baron  Munchausen,  Hie  Fisher  King,  Twelve  Monkeys,  and  Fei  f> 
and  Loathing  in  Las  Vegas).  He  lives  in  London  with  his  wife,  t- 
former  makeup  artist  on  the  Monty  Python  television  show  : 
They  have  two  daughters  and  a  son. 

•  Idle  professes  to  shun  acting  for  writing— his  latest  novel 
The  Road  to  Mars— and  yet  has  performed  in  a  number  >  i 
non-Monty  Python  projects  (his  films  include  Nuns  on  the  Ri\ 
and  Casper);  he  also  wrote,  co-directed,  and  co-starred  in 
You  Need  Is  Cash,  a  mock  documentary  about  a  Beatles-esqtj 
rock  group  (the  Rutles).  Idle  was  raised  by  his  widowed  mot 
er  in  South  Shields,  County  Durham.  At  Cambridge,  he  wl 
the  president  of  Footlights,  the  student  revue  for  which  Cleel 
and  Chapman  also  wrote  and  performed.  Idle  has  a  son  andl 
daughter;  he  and  his  second  wife  live  in  Los  Angeles.  His  Mo 
ty  Python  roles  include  the  insinuating  "nudge,  nudge,  say  i 
more"  chap;  he  was  arguably  the  most  fetching  Python  in  dra 

•  Jones  is  a  noted  history  buff  who  has  written  on  Chaucer  ar    "' 
hosted  a  number  of  documentaries,  including  one  on  the  Cr  I 
sades.  He  directed  Life  of  Brian  and  Monty  Python's  the  Meanit 
of  Life;  apart  from  Monty  Python  he  has  directed  the  films  Er  I 
the  Viking  and  Tire  Wind  in  the  Willows  and  written  several  ch  , 
dren's  books.  The  son  of  a  bank  clerk,  he  was  born  in  Nor  t 
Wales  and  attended  Oxford  University.  He  and  his  wife,  a  bi    . 
chemist,  live  in  London  and  have  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Jon 
regularly  appeared  nude  (playing  the  organ)  in  the  opening  ere  ft 
its  of  the  Monty  Python  television  series;  he  also  played  the  o 
scenely  fat,  vomit-spewing  Mr.  Creosote  in  Tlje  Meaning  of  Lin 

•  Palin  was  born  in  Sheffield,  where  his  father  worked  for  a  stej 
firm.  As  a  teenager,  Palin  met  and  fell  in  love  with  the  woman 
would  eventually  marry  (they  have  two  sons  and  a  daughter  arj 
currently  live  in  London).  Like  Jones,  Palin  attended  Oxfor 
where  the  two  first  wrote  and  performed  together.  Since  Pytho 
Palin  has  starred  in  films  such  as  Brazil  and  A  Fish  Called  Wa 
da  and  has  hosted  three  travel  series  for  the  BBC.  On  Mon  I 
Python  he  played  the  cheese-shop  owner  who  denies  he  has  r  I 
cheese  to  sell  and  the  leader  of  the  dread  Spanish  Inquisition.    I 

Leading  up  to  their  first  collaboration  as  Monty  Python  in  196  l.  . 
the  five  British  members  of  the  group,  already  known  to  each  oi  I 
er  from  their  college  revues,  were  writing  separately  or  in  tear,  I 
for  several  radio  and  TV  shows  at  the  BBC  and  at  independe 
television  (ITV)  companies— including  David  Frost's  influential  Tl  Rg 
Frost  Report,  to  which  all  five  future  Pythons  contributed  and  lt 
which  Cleese  starred.  During  these  years  the  group  members  crosst  I 
paths  with  Gilliam,  who  joined  them  in  British  television.  Tlie  s  I 
soon  recognized  similar  tastes  or  aesthetics  about  how  comei 
should  be  written- all  were  fans  of  radio's  The  Goon  Show  and 
the  Peter  Cook-Dudley  Moore  collaboration  Beyond  the  Fring  I 
At  the  BBC's  behest  and  through  their  own  affinity,  the  grot 
came  together  as  Monty  Python.  All  were  still  in  their  20s. 

JUNE     1  9  <,  n 


IN  CLEESE:  The  worst  problem  we  had  with 

whole  show  was  finding  a  good  title  for  it.  We 

the  first  show  written  and  we  didn't  know 

t  to  call  it,  and  we  had  a  whole  lot  of  fanciful 

;:  A  Horse,  a  Spoon  and  a  Basin,  which  I  really 

i;  Bunn  Wacketl  Buzzard  Stubble  and  Boot;  Owl 

tching  Time;  Tlie  Toad  Elevating  Moment.  In  fact 

BBC  had  started  to  call  it  The  Flying  Circus.  They'd 

ed  writing  it  into  their  schedules,  in  ink,  so  they  said,  "Well, 

id  you  call  it  Tire  Flying  Circusl  Because  otherwise  we'd  have 

'rite  out  new  schedules." 

"hen  we  couldn't  decide  who.  We  thought  it  might  be  Gwen 

'ey's  Flying  Circus,  because  she  was  a  name  Michael  had 

ed  out  of  a  newspaper,  and  then  somehow  we  went  off  Gwen 

ley,  I  don't  know  why— she  could  be  famous  now,  you  know? 

somebody  came  up  with  Monty  Python  and  we  all  fell  about, 

I  can't  explain  why.  We  just  thought  it  was  funny  that  night. 

TERRY  JONES:  The  way  we  went  and  did  the  shows 
is,  first  of  all  we'd  meet  and  talk  about  ideas. 
And  then  we'd  all  go  off  for  like  two  weeks  and 
each  write  individually  or  in  our  pairs.  So  at 
the  end  of  two  weeks  we'd  all  meet  together, 
quite  often  downstairs  in  my  front  room  or 
dining  room,  and  we'd  read  out  the  stuff.  That 
was  the  best  time  of  Python,  the  most  exciting 
time,  when  you  knew  you  were  going  to  hear  new 
stuff  and  they  were  going  to  make  you  laugh. 

*Y  GILLIAM:  You  had  to  jockey  for  position 

ut  when  and  where  a  sketch  was  going  to  be 

1  out,  which  time  of  the  day;  if  it  came  in  too 

y  it  was  going  to  bomb.  And  you  knew  that 

like  and  Terry  or  John  and  Graham  had 

lething  they  wanted  to  do  they  wouldn't  laugh 

tiuch  [at  the  others'].  And  I  was  in  a  funny  position, 

ause  I  was  kind  of  the  apolitical  laugh;  I  was  the  one  guy 

)  had  nothing  at  stake  because  my  stuff  [the  animation]  was 

side  of  theirs. 

Plan     JOHN  CLEESE:  I  was  the  one  who  was  having  to 
Bj  w"te  with  Graham.  Now  I  thought  early  on,  before 

*     Graham's  drinking  was  any  sort  of  a  problem,  it 
would  be  much  more  fun  if  we  occasionally  broke 
up  into  different  writing  groups;  we  could  keep  the 
material  more  varied.  To  some  extent  there  was  a 
Chapman-Cleese  type  of  sketch  (which  was  usually 
somebody  going  into  an  office  of  some  kind  and 
?ably  getting  into  an  argument  in  which  there  would  be  quite  a 
jf  thesaurus-type  words),  whereas  Mike  and  Terry  [Jones] 
ild  nearly  always  start  things  where  some  camera  would  pan 
"  Scottish  or  Icelandic  or  Dartmoor  countryside  and  afterwards 
ild  get  into  some  sort  of  tale.  And  Eric's  was  largely  one  man 
ng  at  a  desk  talking  to  the  camera  and  getting  completely 
ght  up,  as  they  say,  disappearing  up  his  own  ass. 

RY  GILLIAM:  John  and  Graham  wrote  contained 
;es;  they  tended  to  be  very  confrontational 
■es—bam  bam  bam!  Eric  wrote  his  tight  things; 
dplay  was  his  specialty,  I  suppose.  Mike  and 
■y  tended  to  be  more  conceptual  in  the  way 
'  were  approaching  things,  and  I  fit  more  in 

group  with  what  I  was  doing, 
(bu've  got  John  and  Graham  as  the  center  of 

half  of  the  brain,  and  you've  got  Mike  and  Terry  as  the 
ter  of  the  other  half,  and  Eric's  the  individual  on  that  side. 


and  I'm  the  individual  on  this  side.  It's  like  us  on  one  side  who 
thought  in  a  freer  way  and  those  on  the  other  who  thought  in 
this  more  aggressive,  defensive  way  of  writing  sketches;  they're 
much  more  the  control  freaks. 

MICHAEL  PALIN:  Eric  was  always  a  slightly  cheeky 
chap.  I  don't  think  his  characters  were  ever  very 
complex,  but  they  were  really  superbly  performed. 
The  man  who  talked  in  anagrams  and  all  that: 
"Staht  sit  sepreicly."  Well,  I  can't  imagine  any  of 
us  doing  that  in  quite  that  way.  And  also  in  group 
discussion  he  was  very  good.  Not  being  part  of 
the  two  writing  groups,  Eric  was  able  to  look  at  our 
material  in  a  slightly  more  detached  way  and  make  very  good 
comments  about  what  worked  and  what  didn't  work,  which  was 
effective  and  important.  I  suppose  he  was  more  on  our  side,  as 
it  were,  if  you  wanted  to  take  sides  up— more  like  Terry  and 
myself  than  with  John  and  Graham. 


ERIC  IDLE:  When  we  got  to  the  States  we  were  amazed 

to  find  they  assumed  we  wrote  it  out  of  our  minds  on 

drugs— as  if  anyone  could  successfully  write  stoned. 

Actually  we  always  worked  office  hours:  nine  to  five 

with  a  break  for  lunch.  We  were  serious  about  our 

work,  but  we  laughed  like  fuck. 


TERRY  JONES:  I  suppose  the  great  thing  was  we  all 
liked  each  other's  work,  so  we  all  had  respect  for  what 
the  others  did.  So  if  they  thought  [a  sketch]  wasn't 
funny,  you'd  think,  Phew,  that  was  a  bit  of  luck,  we 
might  have  tried  to  do  that.  I  mean,  occasionally 
there  was  something  you  really  thought  was  funny 
and  you  thought,  They  haven't  got  it.  I  suppose  the 
best  example  of  that  was  a  late  one  from  Tlie  Meaning  of  Life,  the 
"Mr.  Creosote"  sketch,  the  fat  man  in  the  restaurant,  which  was 
something  I'd  written.  Mike  and  I  both  thought  it  was  our  funniest 
piece  [a  restaurant  patron  weighing  more  than  all  the  Pythons  put 
together  proceeds  to  spew  vomit  throughout  the  establishment, 
consume  everything  on  the  menu,  and  then— upon  digesting  a 
dainty  after-dinner  mint— explode].  Mike  hit  them  with  it  first  thing 
after  lunch,  and  nobody  thought  it  was  funny,  it  got  thrown  out. 
And  then  about  a  month  later,  John  rang  up  and  said,  "Hello,  this 
is  something  that  will  bring  a  little  smile  to  your  face:  I've  just  been 
looking  at  the  'Mr.  Creosote'  sketch;  I  think  it  could  be  quite 
funny."  What  John  had  realized  I  think  was  that  the  funniest  part 
there  was  the  waiter  [who  accommodates  his  disgusting  but  wealthy 
customer  with  unctuous  doting].  And  he  and  Graham  came  up 
with  the  idea  of  the  "wafer-thin  mint."  So  that  got  rescued. 

TERRY  GILLIAM:  [In  story  meetings]  I  always  had 
the  most  difficulty  because  I  could  never  explain 
what  I  was  doing  [with  my  animation];  whenever  I 
did,  there  would  be  these  blank  faces.  I  was  in 
maybe  the  best  position  because  I  had  the  most 
11"  j*-i     freedom.  The  others  had  to  submit  all  their  material 
^•rf^"     to  the  group  and  get  rejected  or  included  or  changed; 
mine,  because  I  couldn't  explain  it  and  because  we  were  always 
revising  at  the  last  moment,  was  pretty  much  never  touched. 


TERRY  JONES:  As  we  wrote  on,  we  started  parodyin 
each  other.  Mike  and  I  wrote  a  parody  of  one 
of  John  and  Graham's  sketches.  Because  of 
things  like  the  "Dead  Parrot"  sketch,  which  is 
basically  straight  out  of  the  thesaurus  [Cleese's 
frustrated  character  runs  through  a  number  of 
synonyms  for  "dead"  continued  on  pagi 


VANITY     f  A  I  R 


Boogie 
Knight 


cky  Martin  has 
been  hiding  in  plain  sight.  A  major  in- 
ternational star  (with  four  albums,     . 
which  have  sold  more  than  1 5  mil-     / 
lion  copies),  for  years  he  remained 
a  well-kept  secret  in  the  U.S.  And 
then  came  this  year's  Grammys, 
when  he  won  for  best  Latin-pop 
performance  with  his  CD  Vuelve.  "On 
the  chessboard,"  he  says,  "every  piece   ' 
was  in  its  place."  Why  did  his  kinetic  per- 
formance of  his  hit  single  "La  Copa  de  la 
Vida"  capture  everyone's  attention  on  Grammy 
night?  "They  see  a  Latin  guy,"  he  says.  "They  were 
expecting  the  stereotype;  they  were  expecting  the  ran- 
chero  hat  on  top  of  his  head,  and  then  something  modern 
came  out,  something  very  refreshing,  very  energetic." 

Born  Enrique  Martin  Morales  27  years  ago  in  Hato  Rey, 
Puerto  Rico,  Martin  began  his  career  in  earnest  in  1984, 
when  he  joined  the  bubblegum  group  Menudo.  He  looks 
back  on  that  time  with  a  mixture  of  frustration  and  grati- 
tude. "From  1 2  to  17,  the  most  important  years  of  anyone's 
life,  I  had  to  ask  permission  to  talk  and  to  move  and  to  go 
places,"  he  says.  Then  again,  he  adds,  "I  learned  the  real 
&     meaning  of  the  word  'discipline.'"  After  leaving  Menudo, 
■d     Martin  spent  a  year  and  a  half  on  General  Hospital  be- 
\     fore  appearing  in  Les  Miserables  on  Broadway, 
vi  A         His  first  English-language  album,  Ricky  Martin, 
will  be  released  this  month,  and  in  September  he 
embarks  on  a  20-city  concert  tour  of  the  States. 
For  now,  he  wants  to  give  his  full  attention  to  his 
singing  career— "Music  is  very  jealous,"   he 
fe,     says— but  he  has  a  face  made  for  the  movies, 
and  they  are  on  the  horizon.  "You  know,  may- 
be tomorrow  the  best  freaking  script  will 
show  up  with  the  best  director  and  the  best 
cast  and  I'm  gonna  think  about  it." 

Oh,  and  about  those  rumors  linking  him  with 
Madonna?  There  is  a  bit  of  truth  to  them:  she  per- 
forms a  duet  with  him  on  the  new  album.  Its  title: 
"Be  Careful  with  My  Heart."      -PETER  DEVINE 

PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     HERB     RITTS 


PINK  MARTIN 


Finally,  after  years  of 

international  fame,  Ricky  Martin  has 

emerged  as  an  official  American 

pop  star.  Photographed 

at  the  Beverly  Hills  Hotel  on 

March  18,  1999. 


SWINGING 

Vi lit-  Shaw  photographed 
al  home  in  Newbury  Park, 
California,  Noveinbei  17, 
Opposite,  Shan  aboard 
tIk-  line?  i)c  Grasse  in  1951 

.parts  to  clock  al 
Plymouth,  England. 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     BRUCE      WEBER 


as  America's  top  bandleader,  reigning 

supreme  until  1954,  when  he  put  down  his%Hq^net  anc 

walked  away  from  the  audiences  he  had  grown  to  despise. 

Now,  with  the  irascible  89-year-old  on  the  verge 

of  a  major  revival,  CLIFF  ROTHMAN  has  the  score  for 

Shaw's  legend:  the  passion  that  captivated  Hollywood  beauties 

including  Lana  Turner,  Betty  Grable,  and  Ava  Gardner; 

the  courage  that  led  him  to  hire  Billie  Holiday 

oss  racial  barriers;  and  the  brutal  confidence  tha 

earned  him  lasting  enemies  as  well  > 

as  jazz  immortality 


i 


promos  seemed 


unreal.  Every  few  minutes  the  DJ's  on 
Long  Beach  jazz  radio  station  KLON  last 
September  and  October  reminded  listeners: 
"Artie  Shaw,  in  a  one-night-only  concert, 
conducting  an  orchestra  with  his  swing 
hits,  at  the  Wilshire  Theatre  in  Beverly 
Hills."  Was  it  possible  that  the  King  of  the 
Clarinet  was  really  coming  out  of  retire- 
ment? It  was  almost  unimaginable.  All  his 
peers— Benny  Goodman,  the  Dorsey  broth- 
ers, Glenn  Miller— were  long  gone. 

But  when  the  curtain  opened  on  Octo- 
ber 24,  there  he  was,  with  white  hair  and 
a  cane,  swinging  that  baton  as  the  band 
broke  into  the  familiar  strains  of  his  trade- 
mark, "Begin  the  Beguine."  Sixty  years 
earlier,  in  1939,  Shaw  had  held  court  four 
miles  away,  at  the  Palomar  Ballroom,  on 
Vermont  and  Third.  He  had  just  toppled 
Goodman  as  the  country's  top  bandleader, 
and  for  the  next  15  years— as  "Begin  the 
Beguine"  was  followed  by  his  striking  ar- 
rangements of  "Frenesi"  and  "Star  Dust," 
and  swing  gave  way  to  bop,  and  his  gold 
records  stacked  up— it  appeared  that  his 
legend  would  never  stop  growing. 

Then  Shaw  quit,  disgusted,  as  he  said, 
with  the  audiences  and  the  business.  He 
put  his  clarinet  down  at  age  44,  at  the 
peak  of  his  art,  saying  he'd  never  play  it 
publicly  again.  That  was  in  1954. 

"If  you  had  a  gangrenous  right  arm, 
and  you  had  to  cut  it  off  to  save  your  life, 
would  you  miss  the  arm?"  Shaw  says,  as 
truculent  as  ever.  "If  I  had  stayed,  it  would 
have  killed  me."  Then  he  gleefully  adds 
the  clincher:  "And  I'm  the  only  one  of  that 
group  that's  alive." 

Long  eclipsed  by  Goodman,  the  Dor- 
seys,  and  particularly  his  nemesis,  Glenn 
Miller— "the  Lawrence  Welk  of  jazz,"  he 
calls  him— Shaw  is  in  for  a  major  revival. 
The  musician  turned  author  has  just  fin- 
ished the  huge  autobiographical  novel  he 
has  been  at  work  on  for  20  years,  and 
Robert  Altman  is  trying  to  harness  the  un- 
wieldy mass  of  material  into  a  screenplay, 
with  Johnny  Depp  first  in  line  to  play  the 
charismatic,  headstrong  artist.  Altman 


RRT1E  SHflW 


.BUD  HIS  -n 

ORCHESTRA 

PAUIA  KELLY  ■  BOB  DUPONT 
THE  COLSTONS 

ON  THE   SCREEN 

WIUIAM  POtVEU-MYRNA  LOY 


JMjBffltMti 


THE  MUSIC  MAN 


From  top:  Artie  Shaw 
with  Mel  Torme  at  a  recording 
session,  1946;  on  a  poster 
for  a  concert  at  New  York's 
Strand  theater,  1945;  with 
trumpeter  Hot  Lips  Page  at 
the  RCA  Victor  studio  in  New 
York,  1941;  with  Betty 
Grable  at  the  Brown  Derby 
in  Hollywood,  1939. 


\V/' 


k 


t  \ ,  kv 


n 


VANITY     FAIR 


/ 


rA 


\ 


Ji 


<^(     | 


hA        4^r 


SHAW  BUSINESS 


Clockwise  from  top  left: 
Shaw  jamming  with  fellow 
bandleaders  Chick  Webb 
(on  drums)  and  Duke 
Ellington  in  New  York,  1937; 
with  the  comedian  Jerry 
Colonna  at  the  opening  of 
Bop  City  in  New  York,  1949; 
doing  a  solo  turn  in  the 
1940s;  with  Ava  Gardner 
at  the  Stork  Club  in  New 
York,  1945;  with  Lana  Turner 
in  JVlGM's  Dancing  Co-ed, 
1939;  performing  with 
Robert  Benchley  on  CBS 
radio,  1939. 


Bays  be  and  Depp  are  captivated,  "hovei 
mi'  around  this  like  a  bunch  of  bees  at- 
tracted t<>  this  hive,  or  a  bunch  of  moths 
circling  around  tins  Bame  and  we  don't 
exactly  know  why." 

long  tucker,"  says  the  salty,  ven- 
erable  survivor,  who  promises  to  tell  the 
truth.  Truth  telling  has  always  been  a 
Shaw  specialty,  aimed  mostly  at  other  peo- 
ple's shortcomings  rather  than  his  own. 
"He  walked  up  to  Benny  Goodman  once, 
unsolicited,  and  said,  'Practice,  and  you'll 
get  to  be  as  good  as  I  am,'"  says  Gene 
Beecher,  his  friend  since  childhood.  Beech- 
er  laughs  and  adds,  "That's  what  you  do 
if  you  don't  want  to  be  popular." 

"The  fact  is  that  he  is  bigger  than  most 
of  us,"  says  Shaw's  last  live-in  partner, 
Midge  Hayes,  who  moved  in  with  him  just 
before  his  80th  birthday.  "He  tried  more, 
he  did  more,  he  studied  more,  he  wanted 
more,  and  he  got  more."  In  addition  to  be- 
ing a  self-taught  clarinetist  who  grew  into 
a  class  by  himself,  Shaw  broke  the  racist 
code  of  American  pop  music  by  hiring 
Billie  Holiday,  whose  genius  he  recognized 
almost  at  first  hearing.  He  also  became 
mythic  for  the  long  list  of  Hollywood  beau- 
ties he  became  involved  with.  The  darkly 
handsome  musician  had  affairs  with  Betty 
G table  and  Rita  Hayworth,  and  his  eight 
wives  included  Lana  Turner,  Ava  Gardner, 
and  Evelyn  Keyes. 

His  life  has  been  amazing  almost  from 
the  start,  and  for  more  than  half  a  century 
friends,  enemies,  lovers,  and  scholars  have 
been  trying  to  figure  out  the  Shaw  enigma. 

f  anybody  comes  up  to  me  and 
says,  'Oh,  I  just  love  your  "Begin 
the  Beguine,"'  I  want  to  vomit." 
Shaw  may  be  89,  but  he's  hardly 
your  kindly  old  gent,  nostalgic 
about  the  past.  "I  made  that  rec- 
ord 60  years  ago,  man.  I'm 
through  with  that."  He's  indignant  that 
anyone  would  even  think  that  he  might 
want  to  discuss  such  a  thing.  "It  was  a 
good  record.  Good-bye.  Buy  it  if  you 
want  to  talk  about  it.  Don't  talk  to  me 
about  'Begin  the  Beguine.'  It's  over  with." 
The  voice  is  impatient,  and  so,  in  gen- 
eral, is  this  octogenarian.  "He  doesn't  suf- 
fer fools  gladly,"  I  was  told  by  several  of 
his  friends,  as  well  as  by  several  former 
friends  who  have  withered  under  his  glare 
or  his  sharp  tongue.  When  I  phoned  Shaw 
about  this  article,  the  first  words  out  of 
his  mouth  were  "Why  do  you  have  to  in- 
terview me  more  than  once?"  It  was  a 
bark,  lacking  even  a  feigned  attempt  at 
conventional  niceties.  He  had  grabbed  the 
phone  away  from  his  longtime  assistant, 
who  coordinates  Shaw's  schedule,  which 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


is  dictated  by  the  physical  therapy  he  is 
undergoing  for  a  broken  lemur. 

In  person,  when  Shaw  lets  down  his 
guard,  he  can  be  charm  itself.  He  dials 
and  laughs  and  recounts  colorful  anecdotes 
about  legendary  friends  and  acquaintances, 
from  George  Burns  to  Sinclair  Lewis  to 
Louis  B.  Mayer.  "Judy  Garland  laughed 
and  said  to  me  one  day  about  L.B.,  'He 
cries  ball-bearing  tears.'  Isn't  that  great?" 

Shaw  seems  to  know  every- 
thing about  everything.  His 
house  is  wall-to-wall  books, 
piles  of  them  everywhere,  on 
the  floors,  on  the  coffee  table, 
on  the  kitchen  table.  "You 
can  barely  make  it  up  the 
stairway  from  downstairs,"  says  his  friend 
broadcaster  Fred  Hall.  The  walls  are  cov- 
ered with  memorabilia— the  gold  records, 
photographs,  a  painting  of  Shaw  in  mili- 
tary uniform  in  the  South  Pacific,  sent 
by  a  fan. 

Shaw  lives  in  a  modest,  50s-style  house 
on  a  cul-de-sac  in  Newbury  Park,  a  slight- 
ly upper-middle-class,  nondescript  suburb 
40  minutes  west  of  Los  Angeles  on  the 
Ventura  Freeway.  He  comes  to  the  door 
himself,  with  his  cane,  and  then  settles 
into  an  easy  chair  in  the  living  room. 
Through  the  picture  window  behind  him 
is  a  stunning  view  of  Conejo  Valley.  He 
doesn't  have  much  hair  left,  and  what's 
there  is  wispy  and  white.  But  his  inner 
fire— the  vitality  that  erupts  as  he  talks, 
pontificates,  lectures— is  uncanny  for  a 
man  approaching  90.  Robert  Altman, 
an  old  friend,  exclaims,  "We're 
fascinated  that  he's 
here,  and  he's, 
like,  you  could  be 
talking  to  some 
35-year-old  guy." 

At  the  comeback 
concert,  Shaw  made 
jokes  for  the  audi- 
ence of  nearly  2,000. 
At  one  point,  when 
they  broke  into  fevered 
applause,  he  asked  them 
playfully,  "Where  were 
you  when  I  needed  you?" 
His  gripe,   from  the 
moment  he  entered  the 
business— and  the  reason  he 
left  it— was  that  audiences 
wanted  the  same  old  dance 
music,  year  in,  year  out.  "I 
kept  saying,  'If  that's  what 
you  want,  get  a  windshield 
wiper  and  an  out-of-tune  tenor 
playing  'Melancholy  Baby'" 
Music  to  him  was  supposed 


to  be  an  art,  always  evolving,  not  a  fact!  |. 
ry  product  of  the  sort  he  dismisses  Glenr 
Miller  for  playing.  "I  call  it  a  Republicar  I 
band.  It  was  a  businessman's  band    I  hc\ 
never  made  a  mistake.  He  codified  it  all. 
you're  on  the  edge  of  your  ability,  you'ri 
going  to  make  a  mistake  occasionally." 

Trusting  the  gods,  Shaw  has  always  grav 
itated  to  the  edge.  "You  don't  make  it  hap 
pen.  You  let  it  happen,"  he  says  of  art 
repeating  a  snippet  of  the  phone  conversa 
tion  he's  just  had  with  Sophia  Rosoff  a  pi 
ano  therapist  he's  known  for  50  years, 
think  we  may  be  having  a  telephone  love  af 
fair,"  he  adds  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  kid 

In  his  life  and  in  his  music,  Shaw  ha 
generally  operated  without  a  parachute 
It's  the  kamikaze  approach,  and  he  ex 
plains  it  by  describing  the  1953  session  o 
"These  Foolish  Things,"  where  he  re 
corded  his  favorite  solo.  "There  was  thi 
complicated  arrangement  with  a  huge,  48 
piece  band,  and  I'm  playing  a  cadenza,' 
he  says.  "And  you  don't  want  to  make  an 
mistakes,  so  you  get  tight.  Well,  that  nigh 
I  just  jumped  off  the  cliff,  man,  figurini 
I'd  catch  something.  And  I  hit  this  thing 
Son  of  a  bitch!  I  heard  it  back,  I  couldn' 
believe  it." 

For  better  or  worse,  Shaw  has  neede< 
to  please  only  one  person:  himself.  "I  nev 
er  gave  a  damn  about  the  audiences, 
really  never  cared  about  them,"  he  says 
"Audiences  were  a  necessary  evil.  You  ha< 
to  have  them  there  or  you  didn't  get  paid.' 
That  approach  has  been  hell 


CONTINUED    ON    PAGE 


Artie  Shaw  ettorta 

his  third  wife.  I. una  lunur. 

t(»  an  NBC  broadcast 

premiere  in  Hollywood.  1940. 

Inset,  the  Bop  (  ity  marquee  in 

New  York  in  the  early  5(h 

Uives  Artie  Shaw  top  billing. 

our  Ilia  lit- 


,    FjlENNES ■■POINT 


or  hts  role  as  an  Olympic  fencer  in 

Taste  of  Su'nsh/ne,  Ralph  Fiennes  took  lessons 

from  one. «>f  France's  former  Olympic  coaches. 

"I  got  very  into  it,"  says  Fiennes, 

photographed  on  the  set  in  Budapest, 

December  30,  1998. 


I 


L 


c)  ixa/tLcaKt 


Duel 
Identity 


rom  the  flickering  eyes  to  the  se- 
ductive, slightly  guilty  smile,  Ralph  Fiennes  is  never  better  than  when 
he's  keeping  a  secret.  Little  surprise,  then,  that  writer-director  Istvan 
Szabo  (Mephisfo)  felt  Fiennes  was  the  only  actor  who  could  take 
on  Taste  of  Sunshine,  his  highly  personal  epic  about  a  Hungarian- 
Jewish  family  tormented  by  the  desire  to  assimilate.  Set  in  Budapest, 
against  the  backdrop  of  three  calamitous  political  regimes— the 
Austro-Hungarian  Empire  in  its  last  days,  Fascism,  and  Communism- 
the  film  chronicles  three  generations  of  the  Sonnenschein  clan, 
whose  shame  leads  to  nearly  a  century  of  family  betrayals.  For 
Fiennes,  who  plays  the  film's  three  major  roles-lgnatz,  the  grandfa- 
ther, a  fiercely  ambitious  judge;  his  son  Adam,  an  arrogant  fencer 
who  converts  to  Catholicism  in  order  to  compete  in  the  Olympic 
games;  and  the  grandson  Ivan,  a  disillusioned  Communist— it  was 
more  than  an  actor's  showcase.  Szabo's  film,  which  the  director  de- 
scribes as  "the  story  of  a  great  identity  crisis,"  provided  a  pinnacle 
to  Fiennes's  unforgettable  portrayals  of  haunted  men  in  The  English 
Patient  and  Quiz  Show,  and  onstage  in  Hamlet. 

It  was  also  an  opportunity  for  Fiennes,  who  played  a  Nazi  com- 
mandant in  Schind/er's  List,  to  visit  the  other  side  of  anti-Semitism.  But 
while  that  role  entailed  immersion  in  Holocaust  literature,  the  only 
source  Fiennes  needed  this  time  was  his  director,  who  in  his  38 
years  of  filmmaking  has  never  shot  outside  his  native  Budapest.  Re- 
calls Fiennes,  "He  could  tell  me  what  it  was  like  to  be  in  a  cafe  and 
not  trust  that  you  weren't  being  bugged— [about]  the  ways  alle- 
giances shifted.  He  took  me  around  to  sites  in  the  city  to  show  me 
'This  is  what  happened,  this  is  what  it  was  like.'"  Just  how  personal 
Taste  of  Sunshine  was  for  Szabo  unveiled  itself  little  by  little.  Produc 
er  Robert  Lantos  recalls  his  first  day  visiting  the  set:  "I  looked  around 
at  this  dilapidated  building  in  the  courtyard  which  looked  so  much 
like  the  house  described  in  the  script.  I  said  to  Istvan,  'How  did  you 
find  this?' He  said, 'Well,  I  was  born  here.'"        -EVGENIA  PERETZ 

PHOTOGRAPH     B  v     JULIAN      BROAD 


DESERT  ROYALTY 


Lee  and  Walter  Annenberg  at 
Sunnylands,  their  250-acre  estate  in  ~ 
Rancho  Mirage,  where  they  have 
received  Presidents  Eisenhower,  Nixon, 
Ford,  Reagan,  Bush,  and  Clinton. 
Opposite,  Twin  Palms,  Frank  Sinatra's 
first  house  in  Palm  Springs,  designed 
by  Stewart  Williams  in  1947. 


The  faded  desert  jewel  of  Palm  Springs 
is  sparkling  once  again,  as  trendsetters  from  John  Travolta 

to  Gucci's  Tom  Ford  rediscover  its  exuberant 
modernist  aesthetic.  Summoning  the  hedonistic  past  of  a 
jsort  that  drew  a  cavalcade  of  celebrities  including  Bing  Crosby, 

Lucille  Ball,  and  Frank  Sinatra  and  presidents  from 

senhower  to  Reagan,  writer  BOB  COLACELLO  and  photographer 

JONATHAN  BECKER  tour  its  social  and  architectural  delights: 

houses  built  by  masters  such  as  Albert  Frey, 

John  Lautner,  A.  Quincy  Jones,  and  Richard  Neutra 

and  inhabited  by  luminaries  such  as  Bob 

and  Dolores  Hope,  Walter  and  Lee  Annenberg,  and 

Kirk  and  Anne  Douglas 


he  Palm  Springs  house  of  Bob 

and  Dolores  Hope  sits  ;ii  the  top 
ofSouthridge  Drive,  overlooking 
the  entire  Coachella  Valley,  from 
the  Banning  Pass  to  the  north- 
west, where  the  freeway  from 
Los  Angeles  cuts  between  Mount 
San  Gorgonio  and  Mount  San 
Jacinto,  each  of  which  rises  more 
than  10,000  feet  above  the  val- 
ley's flat  desert  floor,  all  the  way 
to  Indio,  a  thriving  agricultural 
center  known  for  its  date  crop 
and  its  polo  grounds,  some 
30  miles  to  the  southeast.  In  be- 
tween Banning  and  Indio,  strung  out  along  Highway  111  like  a 
necklace  of  emeralds  on  an  ancient,  parched  chest,  are  the  winter 
resort  towns  which  have  made  this  sun-drenched  corner  of  South- 
ern California  rich  and  famous:  Palm  Springs  itself,  an  old 
cabochon  in  need  of  some  polishing;  the  somewhat  less  lustrous 
Cathedral  City;  and  the  brilliantly  green  country-club  communi- 
ties of  Rancho  Mirage,  Palm  Desert,  Indian  Wells,  and  La  Quinta. 
There  are  only  about  a  dozen  houses  on  Southridge  Drive,  a  pri- 
vate road  with  a  guardhouse  at  its  base,  most  of  them  built  in  the 
1960s  and  70s,  and  all  of  them  ultramodern,  including  those  once 
owned  by  Steve  McQueen,  when  he  was  married  to  Ali  MacGraw, 
and  William  Holden,  when  he  lived  with  Stefanie  Powers.  The 
Hopes'  house,  which  they  moved  into  in  1979,  is  by  far  the  larg- 
est and,  surprisingly,  the  most  avant-garde:  a  25,000-square-foot 
concrete-steel-and-glass  behemoth,  with  a  vast  curving  roof  of  copper 
that  matches  the  mountains  behind  it.  Designed  by  John  Lautner, 
one  of  the  recognized  geniuses  of  California  modernism,  and  said  to 
have  cost  more  than  $2  million,  it  features  that  ultimate  Palm  Springs 
indoor-outdoor  touch:  a  boulder  jutting  into  the  living  room.  Dolores 
Hope  calls  it  a  "contemporary  castle."  Others  have  compared  it 
to  the  TWA  terminal  at  New  York's  Kennedy  Airport,  the  Houston 
Astrodome,  and  a  giant  mushroom.  In  any  case,  its  commanding 
view,  overwhelming  scale,  and  dramatic  architecture  make  it  the  per- 
fect headquarters  for  the  undisputed  king  and  queen  of  Palm  Springs. 
The  Hopes  first  came  to  Palm  Springs  in  1937,  to  spend  a  week- 
end at  the  old  El  Mirador  Hotel.  They  bought  their  first 
house  in  1941,  "in  the  poor  section,"  as  Dolores  Hope 
puts  it,  and  a  second  in  1946,  on  El  Alameda  in  the  then 
new  area  known  as  the  Movie  Colony,  where  their  neigh- 
bors included  Bing  Crosby,  Frank  Sinatra,  Cary  Grant, 
Gloria  Swanson,  and  Darryl  Zanuck.  They  still  own  both 
of  these  houses;  in  fact,  part  of  Bob  Hope's  estimated  $  150 
million  fortune  is  based  on  Coachella  Valley  real  estate. 
Hope  was  named  honorary  mayor  of  Palm  Springs  in  the 
1950s  and  again  in  the  80s.  In  1965  the  Desert  Classic 
golf  tournament  was  renamed  the  Bob  Hope  Desert 
Classic.  President  Clinton  joined  former  presidents  Ford 
and  Bush  at  the  tournament  in  1995.  Dolores  Hope  has 
been  chairman  of  the  board  of  the  Eisenhower  Medical 
Center  in  Rancho  Mirage  since  1968,  when  she  and  Bob 
donated  the  80  acres  of  land,  then  valued  at  nearly  $  1  mil- 
lion, on  which  it  was  built.  Her  elaborate  parties— Christ- 
mas and  Easter  celebrations  that  include  a  Mass  at  home; 
an  annual  Italian  bash  for  the  players  in  the  Classic  with 
her  fabled  antipasto— have  long  drawn  the  cream  of  the 
Coachella  Valley's  winter  residents,  including  Betty  and 

VANITY     FAIR 


THE  HOUSE  OF  HOPE 


Bob  Hope,  96,  and  his  wife,  Dolores,  90, 
known  as  the  king  and  queen  of  Palm  Springs, 
at  the  "contemporary  castle"  John  Lautner 
designed  for  them  in  the  70s.  The  concrete- 
steel-and-glass  house,  seen  here  from  the  rear, 
has  been  compared  to  everything  from  the 
Houston  Astrodome  to  the  TWA  terminal  at 
J.F.K.  Airport  to  a  giant  mushroom.  With 
Bing  Crosby  and  Frank  Sinatra  gone,  Hope 
is  the  last  of  Palm  Springs'  Big  Three. 


I IV!)! 

were  1 

da,  Wei 
lamp,  v 

ookec 
/mdy; 

says  foruiernre 

sidei) 

1  Serai* 

1  Ford 

ii      *W\ 


<ii 


UNDERSTATED  CHIC 


From  top:  former  president  Gerald 
Ford  with  his  wife,  Betty,  who  opened 
her  nearby  center  for  substance-abuse 
treatment  in  1982,  at  their  house 
on  the  golf  course  of  the  Thunderbird 
Country  Club;  GQ  creative  director 
Jim  Moore,  who  helped  launch 
the  Palm  Springs  revival  in  1993, 
in  his  1960s  Donald  VVexler  house; 
Jane  Gosden,  widow  of  Freeman 
Gosden— who  played  Amos  on  the 
Amos  and  Andy  radio  show  in  the 
1930s  and  40s  and  was  President 


at  the  Eldorado  Countrv  Club. 


Gerald  Ford,  Lee  and  Walter  Annenberg,  Anne  and  Kirk  Doug- 
las, and  Eunice  and  John  Johnson,  the  founders  of  Ebony  maga- 
zine. Last  year  Queen  Elizabeth  II  made  Bob  Hope  an  honorary 
knight  of  the  British  Empire,  and  Pope  John  Paul  II  gave  both 
Hopes  papal  knighthoods. 

At  96,  Bob  Hope  is  the  last  of  the  Palm  Springs  Big  Three— 
Bing  Crosby  died  playing  golf  in  1977,  and  Frank  Sinatra  is 
buried  at  the  Desert  Memorial  Park  Cemetery  in  Cathedral 
City.  Although  his  sight  and  hearing  are  failing,  he  refuses  to 
wear  eyeglasses  or  a  hearing  aid,  but  he  still  knows  what's  going 
on.  That  is  evident  the  afternoon  he  is  photographed  by  Jona- 
than Becker  for  this  article.  Looking  spiffy  in  a  tweed  jacket,  a 
pink  shirt  with  white  collar  and  cuffs,  a  pink-and-silver  tie, 
gabardine  slacks,  and  tassel  loafers,  he  is  brought  down  from 
the  second  floor  on  the  elevator  and  out  to  the  patio  by  his 
around-the-clock  male  nurse.  He  is  in  a  wheelchair  and  asleep. 

"Here's  our  baby  boy,"  announces  Dolores  Hope,  who  will 
turn  90  this  month  and  is  still  going  strong.  Her  outfit— purple 
blazer,  pink  blouse  and  pants,  white  pumps— is  color-coordinated 
with  her  husband's.  "Bob,  wake  up,  honey,"  she  shouts.  "You're 
on  Candid  Camera. " 

"Mr.  Hope,"  the  nurse  asks,  "do  you  think  you  can  stay 
awake  for  the  photos?" 

"Yes,  sir.  I'll  try." 

He  comes  alive  for  the  camera,  and  when  the  10-minute  shoot 
is  over,  the  nurse  asks  him  if  he'd  prefer  to  have  his  afternoon 
glass  of  wine  upstairs  in  his  room  or  downstairs  with  his  guests. 

"Upstairs,"  Hope  answers  firmly. 

Later,  sitting  inside  with  her  old  friends  William  Frye  and 
James  Wharton,  Hollywood  producers  who  have  retired  to  the 
Ironwood  Country  Club  in  Palm  Desert,  Dolores  Hope  remi- 
nisces. "I  had  a  party  for  Bob  for  his  90th  birthday.  We  did  a 
whole  carnival  thing— clowns  and  magicians.  We  had  about  140 
people.  Forty  of  them  are  gone.  Dinah  Shore.  Gloria  and  Jimmy 
Stewart.  Alice  Faye  and  Phil  Harris.  George  Burns.  You  know, 
that's  what  happens  with  this  age  group— 40  gone  in  six  years." 

"The  party  I  remember  here,"  says  Frye,  "was  your  75th 
birthday.  All  those  marvelous  women— Irene  Dunne,  Dorothy 
Lamour,  June  Haver,  Alice  Faye— just  got  up  and  sang.  And  I 
remember  what  Bob  gave  you:  a  rope  of  diamonds." 

"A  string  of  diamonds,"  says  Dolores  Hope. 

"That's  right.  And  I  remember  thinking,  Every  woman  has  a 
string  of  pearls,  but  only  Dolores  has  a  string  of  diamonds." 

"You  know  how  long  that  took  me  to  get?" 

When  a  maid  emerges  from  the  kitchen  with  a  tray  of  freshly 
baked  Danish  pastries,  Dolores  Hope  asks  for  a  martini  and  her 
new  CD,  which  will  be  out  this  month.  It's  the  fifth  album  of  old 
favorites  that  she's  recorded  since  1993,  when  she  revived  the 
singing  career  she  gave  up  after  marrying  Hope  65  years  ago. 
The  title:  Young  at  Heart. 

his  is  God's  waiting  room,"  says  Frank  Bogert, 
the  89-year-old  former  mayor  of  Palm  Springs, 
who  rides  his  horse  two  hours  nearly  every  day 
in  the  Indian  Canyons  south  of  town.  "The  aver- 
age age,"  says  novelist  Sidney  Sheldon,  82,  "is 
deceased."  A  recent  arrival  notes,  "All  the  peo- 
ple I  thought  had  died  are  alive  and  kicking  in 

Palm  Springs.  Time  sort  of  stands  still  here." 

Actually,  the  average  age  of  the  Coachella  Valley's  275,000 

year-round  residents  is  35.  And  the  city  of  Palm  Springs  is  in  the 

VANITY     FAIR      I 


197 


midsi  ol  .  majot  revh  il  Whal  An  Decodid  for  Miami  Beach  in 
nodernism  is  doing  for  Palm  Springs  today  attracting 
an  afflt  aeration  infatuated  with  its  style  and  Ins- 

mi  making  a  failed  resort  fashionable  Once  more. 

Newcomers  also  come  fol  the  same  reasons  old-timers  never 
leavi  convenience  Palm  Springs  is  a  mere  two  hours  by  ear  Bom 
I  OS  Angeles  and  "the  bliss  of  this  climate,"  as  artist  and  man- 
about-town  Ganl  Gaither  puts  it.  "Unlike  Palm  Beach,  which  is 
humid  and  sticky,  it's  cool  at  night,  so  the  ladies  can  wear  their 
chinchillas."  Daytime  temperatures  run  between  60  and  90  de- 
grees from  October  to  June,  and  it  rains  only  15  to  20  days  a  year. 

But  without  question  architecture  is  the  key  to  the  new  Palm 
Springs.  This  curious  place,  where  Hollywood  stars  hid  out  in 
hacienda-style  hotels  (Fatty  Arbuckle  at  the  Desert  Inn,  Greta 
Garbo  at  the  Ingleside  Inn,  Charlie  Chaplin  at  the  La  Quinta 
Hotel)  and  Republican  presidents  retired  at  exclusive  golf  clubs 
(Eisenhower  at  Eldorado,  Ford  at  Thunderbird),  was  also  a  mec- 
ca  for  modernist  architects,  including  the  Los  Angeles  visionaries 
Rudolph  Schindler  and  Richard  Neutra.  Starting  in  the  30s,  such 
resident  talents  as  Albert  Frey,  William  Cody,  Stewart  Williams, 
and  Donald  Wexler  designed  everything  from  the  Palm  Springs 
City  Hall  to  the  high-school  auditorium,  the  airport,  shopping 
centers,  hotels,  motels,  gas  stations,  and  private  residences. 

"We  have  the  largest  concentration  of  mid-century  modern  ar- 
chitecture anywhere,"  says  Marc  Sanders,  the  young  real-estate 
investor  who  recently  bought  and  restored  Frank  Sinatra's  first 
house  in  Palm  Springs,  which  was  designed  by  Stewart  Williams 
in  1947.  "People  are  finally  starting  to  recognize  that  and  appreciate 
it."  According  to  Tony  Merchell,  a  board  member  of  the  Palm 
Springs  Historic  Site  Preservation  Foundation,  there  are  at  least 
575  modern  buildings  and  additions  in  the  area  (not  including 
the  2,400  tract  houses  and  condominiums  built  by  contractors 
George  and  Bob  Alexander  in  the  1950s  and  60s). 

have  people  waiting  for  houses  to  go  on  the  market. 
They're  waiting  for  people  to  die,"  says  real-estate  agent 
and  former  model  Nelda  Linsk.  "There's  a  Neutra  house 
in  Rancho  Mirage  that  these  people  are  just  champing  at 
the  bit  for.  We  had  a  slow,  slow  market.  It  went 
downhill  in  1989.  And  just  this  year  it's  come 
back  in  a  big  way.  I  mean,  it's  incredible  now, 
the  renewed  interest  in  Palm  Springs." 

Douglas  Smith,  the  proprietor  of  the  Korakia  Pen- 
sione— a  restored  1920s  villa  where  everyone  from  Do- 
natella Versace  to  Chris  O'Donnell  to  New  York  Times 
publisher  Arthur  Sulzberger  Jr.  has  stayed— agrees.  "It 
was  like  a  ghost  town  when  I  came  in  1990.  Every  other 
shop  was  vacant.  And  the  shop  that  was  occupied  was  a 
T-shirt  shop.  Now  I'm  finding  that  up  to  three  guests  a 
month  are  buying  houses  out  here."  The  most  recent 
Korakia  regular  to  turn  into  a  Palm  Springs  homeowner 
is  theater  and  film  director  Michael  Lindsay-Hogg,  who 
just  closed  on  a  $250,000  house  in  an  Alexander  subdi- 
vision called  Vista  Las  Palmas. 

Artist  Ed  Ruscha  likes  to  sequester  himself  in  a 
rugged  cabin  of  his  own  design  in  the  high  desert  20 
miles  north  of  town.  Gucci's  Tom  Ford  spends  his 
Palm  Springs  weekends  at  the  U Horizon  Garden  Ho- 
tel, which  was  designed  in  1954  by  William  Cody,  and 
originally  owned  by  Jack  Wrather  and  his  actress  wife, 
Bonita  Granville,  the  producer  of  Lassie.  Tatiana  Von 

!      VANITY     FAIR 


What  Art  Deco  did  for  Miami  Beach  in  the  1980s, 
modernism  is  doing  for  Palm  Springs  today. 


HAUTE  MODERNISM 


Richard  Neutra's  1946  Kaufmann  House. 

the  architectural  gem  of  Palm  Springs,  has  been 

restored  at  an  estimated  cost  of  $4.5  million 

by  financial  executive  Brent  I  larris  and  his  wife. 

Beth,  an  architectural  historian  (at  left  with 

their  children).  Built  for  Pittsburgh  retailer 

Edgar  Kaufmann.  for  whom  Frank  l.lo>d  Wright 

designed  Kallingwatcr.  the  restored  house  has 

been  designated  a  Class  I  I  listoric  Site. 


LAS  PALMAS  ST 


Wayne  Boeck,  teacher,  and  Go 

Locksley,  a  private  art  d« 

I  from  Minneapolis,  in  the  living  roo 

Locksley 's  1957  house  in  the  posh 

Palmas  section  of  Palm  Spri 

Thejiouse  was  designed  by  A.  Qv 

Jones  and  still  has  its  ori| 

Arthur  Elrod  d< 


rstenberg  and  Carolina  Herrera  Jr.  drive  out  from  Los  Ange- 
to  stay  at  Two  Bunch  Palms,  the  laid-back  spa  in  nearby 
;sert  Hot  Springs.  There  are  also  more  than  20  exclusively  gay 
esthouses  in  the  Warm  Sands  district,  most  of  them  "clothing- 
tionar  and  all  of  them  booming.  The  decidedly  more  up- 
lle  Merv  Griffin's  Resort  Hotel  &  Givenchy  Spa-which  was 
j  Gene  Autry  Hotel  until  it  was  transformed  by  Washington, 
C,  hotelier  Rose  Narva  in  1995— attracts  such  luminaries  as 
tncy  Reagan  and  John  Travolta.  This  past  April,  Los  Angeles 
igazine  proclaimed  Palm  Springs  "so  hot  it's  cool  again." 
lis  September,  Rizzoli  is  publishing  Adele  Cygelman's  compre- 
nsive  coffee-table  book,  Palm  Springs  Modern. 
Many  credit  GQ  creative  director  Jim  Moore  with  kicking  off 
j  comeback  in  1993,  when  he  bought  a  steel-framed,  early-60s 
jnald  Wexler  house  for  under  $100,000  in  the  run-down 
rth  end  of  town.  That  same  year,  Brent  Harris,  a  Newport 
ach  financial  executive,  and  his  wife,  Beth,  an  architectural 
;torian,  bought  from  singer  Barry  Manilow  for  $1.2  million 
tat  is  probably  the  greatest  modernist  masterpiece  in  Palm 
rings— the  Kaufmann  House  in  the  posh  Las  Palmas  area.  It 
is  built  in  1946  by  Richard  Neutra  for  Edgar  Kaufmann,  the 
ttsburgh  department-store  magnate  who  had  commissioned 
ank  Lloyd  Wright's  Fallingwater  in  1936.  The  Harrises  pro- 
eded  to  spend  the  next  five  years  and  a  rumored  $4.5  million 
storing  it  to  its  original,  pristine  beauty. 
"It's  not  'martini  modern.'  It  doesn't  have  that  swank  quality, 
s  more  Zen-like,"  Beth  Harris  explains.  "Neutra  had  a  theory 
lied  bionaturalism.  He  felt  that  a  house  should  make  you  feel 
lysically  comfortable  and  serene."  The  Harrises  went  as  far  as  to 
.ve  a  machine  reconstructed  in  order  to  duplicate  the  original 
eet-metal  molding.  They  also  had  the  Los  Angeles  firm  of  Mar- 
ol  and  Radziner  build  an  architecturally  compatible  pool  house 
i  an  adjacent  lot.  That's  where  they  have  their  dinner  parties.  As 
ent  Harris  says,  "It's  a  building  we  erected  to  view  this  building." 
In  1994,  Brad  Dunning,  the  influential  Los  Angeles  designer 
io  is  currently  working  on  Tom  Ford's  Neutra  house  in  Bel  Air, 
and  a  "generic  modern"  three-bedroom  ranch  in  the  Deepwell 
ea  for  about  $150,000.  Others  soon  followed,  including  New 
>rk  film  director  Doug  Keeve  and  Los  Angeles  artist  Jim  Iser- 
ann,  who  bought  Wexler  houses  across  the  street  from  Jim 
oore's,  and  metalware  manufacturers  Jim  Gaudineer  and  Tony 
idilla,  who  are  restoring  Albert  Frey's  1946  Loewy  House— next 
the  Kaufmann  House— which  was  built  for  Raymond  Loewy, 
e  man  who  designed  the  Coca-Cola  bottle.  Three  years  ago, 
an  Burkle,  the  billionaire  supermarket  tycoon  and  major  Clin- 
n  fund-raiser,  who  owns  11  houses  in  Southern  California,  ac- 
lired  John  Lautner's  1968  Elrod  House— just  down  the  hill  from 
e  Hopes— which  had  been  on  the  market  for  $1.8  million.  This 
>ncrete-and-glass  circular  fantasy  was  commissioned  by  the  late 
rthur  Elrod— the  Palm  Springs  decorator  of  the  50s,  60s,  and 
)s,  fond  of  blindingly  bright  color  schemes— and  appeared  in  the 
mes  Bond  movie  Diamonds  Are  Forever.  Last  year  Seattle-based 
list  Dale  Chihuly  and  his  wife,  Leslie  Jackson,  paid  $350,000 
r  the  house  architect  Stewart  Williams  designed  for  himself  in 
•54.  Among  its  notable  features  is  a  20-foot-long  "tilt-up  wall," 
ade  by  pouring  concrete  onto  the  desert  floor,  letting  it  harden, 
id  then  lifting  it  up,  complete  with  whatever  rocks  and  sand 
ive  stuck  to  it  in  the  process. 

"What  attracted  me  to  Palm  Springs  was  the  combination  of 
odern  design  and  the  desert,"  Brad  Dunning  says.  "There  is 
•mething  very  modern  about  the  landscape  itself.  It's  clean  and 


barren.  Modernity  really  worked  out  here  because  of  this  harsh 
sunlight  and  these  harsh  shadows.  You  could  also  have  floor-to- 
ceiling  glass,  because  you  don't  have  cold  weather.  It  really  was  a 
great  marriage  of  geography  and  design.  And  also,  these  were 
mainly  second  homes,  so  they  could  be  more  experimental,  more 
flamboyant.  So  many  houses  out  here  have  these  tiny  kitchens, 
and  then  they'll  have  a  big  wet  bar.  That  tells  you  what  the  prior- 
ities were.  I  was  thinking,  Why  did  this  all  dry  up?  What  did  peo- 
ple come  out  here  to  do?  They  came  out  here  to  drink,  lie  in  the 
sun,  and  fuck  each  other  crazy.  It  was  all  about  hedonism,  and 
that  became  so  unpopular.  But  if  you  look  at  a  lot  of  the  old  pic- 
tures, people  are  just  sloshed  out  of  their  brains— Sinatra  and 
Dean  Martin  and  all  those  guys.  And  they're  baking  in  the  sun." 

"Palm  Springs  is  the  most  boring  place  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,"  says  Gordon  Locksley,  a  private  art  dealer  from  Min- 
neapolis who  lives  in  Las  Palmas  in  a  1957  house  designed  by 
Los  Angeles  architect  A.  Quincy  Jones  which  he  and  his  busi- 
ness partner,  George  Shea,  have  left  as  is  with  its  original  Arthur 
Elrod  decor:  plush  white  rugs,  black  glass  bar,  his-and-her  poker 
and  mah-jongg  tables.  "There  is  nothing  to  do  except  to  live  com- 
fortably and  to  seek  your  own  pleasure.  Just  imagine  this:  You're 
in  a  modernist  house,  it  has  complete  privacy,  it  has  a  wonderful 
pool.  You  wake  up  at  two  in  the  morning.  You're  quite  warm. 
The  luxury  is  to  get  up,  open  the  slider,  walk  into  the  garden, 
and  dive  into  the  pool,  completely  naked.  Now,  you  tell  me,  is 
that  a  Hollywood  dream  or  is  it  not?" 

Or,  as  Korakia's  Douglas  Smith  puts  it,  "There's  this  sort  of  weird- 
ness  and  wackiness  about  Palm  Springs  that  makes  it  all  work." 

arilyn  Monroe  was  discovered  here.  Elvis  and 
Priscilla  Presley  honeymooned  here.  General 
Patton  rehearsed  World  War  II  battles  in  the 
desert  here.  Patty  Hearst,  people  say,  recuper- 
ated from  her  kidnapping  by  the  Symbionese 
Liberation  Army  at  her  uncle  George  Ran- 
dolph Hearst's  house  here.  Cesar  Romero  al- 
legedly had  an  affair  with  Tyrone  Power  here.  Jack  Benny  and 
"Amos  and  Andy"  broadcast  their  radio  shows  from  here.  John  and 
Maureen  Dean,  of  Watergate  fame,  owned  a  condominium  here. 
Darryl  Strawberry  detoxed  at  the  Betty  Ford  Center  here.  Truman 
Capote  fell  in  love  with  an  air-conditioner  repairman  here.  Liber- 
ace  died  here.  Darryl  Zanuck  won  a  house  from  Joseph  Schenck 
in  a  poker  game  here.  Jolie  Gabor,  the  mother  of  Magda,  Zsa  Zsa, 
and  Eva,  played  bridge  until  she  was  over  100  here.  West  German 
chancellor  Konrad  Adenauer  golfed  with  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower 
here.  Busby  Berkeley  is  buried  here.  Tammy  Faye  Bakker  lives  here. 
The  U.S.  Navy  tests  weapons  at  the  Chocolate  Mountains  Aerial 
Gunnery  Range  here.  Carol  Channing  is  coping  with  her  sensa- 
tional divorce  here.  Ronald  Reagan  celebrated  every  New  Year's 
Eve  of  his  presidency  here.  Norman  Mailer's  1955  novel,  Tlie  Deer 
Park,  was  set  here.  He  disguised  Palm  Springs  as  Desert  D'Or. 

In  1776,  when  the  first  Spanish  explorer  came  upon  a 
band  of  Cahuilla  Indians  living  around  the  mineral 
springs  in  the  palm  oasis  at  the  foot  of  Mount  San  Jacin- 
to, he  called  them  and  the  place  Agua  Caliente,  "hot  wa- 
ter." In  1884,  the  first  white  settler,  Judge  John  Guthrie 
McCallum,  a  San  Francisco  lawyer  who  chose  the  area 
in  hopes  that  its  dry,  hot  climate  would  cure  his  son's  tu- 
berculosis, renamed  the  place  Palm  Valley.  Three  years  later,  the 
small  Palm  Springs  Hotel  opened,  and  that  name  stuck.  Until 


VANITY     FAIR 


JKJ 


iHix.iMin 


/ TDiti  top:  former 

ambassador  (  liar  I.  s 

Price  and  his  wile, 

Carol,  i>l  Kansas  City 

niiisidc  their  winter 

home  at  llit  Lldorado 

Country  Ck/h,  with  the 

Santa  Uosa  Mountains 

behind  them:  television- 

hotel-aiid-rcal-cstaic 

mogul  Men  Griffin 

with  his  shar-pei  in 

a  1971  Mercedes  at  his 

240-acre  estate  in 

La  Quinta,  which  has  a 

private  racetrack;  Las 

I'almas  at  sundown. 


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& 


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TOTAL  GLAMOUR 

Barbara  Sinatra,  Frank's  widow,  above,  unveils  a  sculpture 
by  David  Katz  at  the  Barbara  Sinatra  Children's  Center  in  Rancho 
Mirage.  Founded  by  the  Sinatras  in  1986,  the  center  helps 
sexually,  physically,  and  emotionally  abused  children,  as  well  as 
pregnant  teenagers.  Below,  recently  retired  Los  Angeles 
couturier  James  Galanos  in  his  new  house  in  Las  Palmas. 


k.l\  LM 


/ 


COCKTAIL  MIX 

Clockwise  from  right:  novelist  Sidney 
Sheldon  at  home  in  Las  Palmas; 
Angela  Pond,  with  friend  Roni  Woolf, 
behind  the  wheel  of  one  of  the 
106  cars  her  grandfather  Bob  Pond 
keeps  at  his  ranch;  oilman  Bobby 
French  and  his  wife,  Marcia,  in  their 
Steve  Chase-decorated  home  at 
Eldorado;  filmmaker  Doug  Keeve 
in  his  Wexler  house;  artist  Ed 
Ruscha  and  his  son,  Ed  Ruscha  V, 
at  their  high-desert  hideaway; 
peninsular  bighorn  sheep  in  the 
Living  Desert  nature  park. 


\ 


.-*•• 

\ 

>■  '•  1 

mmmk 

tjZJ 

a  • 

y&&& 


iot  martini  modern.'  Its  more  Zen-like. 
Kaufmann  House  owner  Beth  Harris., 


\ 


f 


15,  when  Nellie  Coffman,  the  daughter  of  a  Santa  Monica  hotel 
ner,  turned  a  small  sanatorium  into  the  Desert  Inn,  Palm 
rings  was  almost  exclusively  visited  by  sufferers  of  tuberculosis, 
:hma.  arthritis,  and  allergies. 

Coffman  was  determined  to  make  the  tiny  hamlet  "attractive 
attractive  people."  By  the  mid-20s  she  had  transformed  her 
iginal  cluster  of  tent  houses  into  a  first-class  hotel  with  100 
oms  and  bungalows,  35  acres  of  gardens,  and  Palm  Springs' 
st  swimming  pool.  In  1925,  Judge  McCallum's  daughter,  Pearl 
cManus,  opened  the  Oasis  Hotel  one  block  south  of  the  Desert 
n  on  the  main  street,  Palm  Canyon  Drive.  Designed  by  Lloyd 
right,  the  eldest  son  of  Frank  Lloyd  Wright,  it  was  Palm 
■rings'  first  modernist  building,  with  a  round  room  on  the  top 
tor  which  is  still  called  the  Loretta  Young  Room,  because  the 
en  teenage  starlet  was  a  regular  guest.  A  year  later,  the  La 
uinta  Hotel  was  built  22  miles  away,  a  white  adobe  hideaway 
t  amid  the  date-palm  groves  west  of  Indio.  On  New  Year's  Eve 
28,  Prescott  T.  Stevens,  a  cattleman  from  Colorado,  inaugu- 
ted  the  luxurious  El  Mirador  Hotel  on  Indian  Avenue  north  of 
wn,  featuring  a  fleet  of  bellboys,  a  doorman  in  a  general's  uni- 
rm,  and  a  garage  equipped  with  eight  rooms  for  the  chauf- 
jrs  of  the  moguls  and  movie  stars  who  flocked  to  the  hotel  on 
inter  weekends:  Mary  Pickford  and  Buddy  Rogers,  Paulette 
oddard,  Claudette  Colbert,  John  Wayne,  Gary  Cooper.  "They 
1  stayed  at  El  Mirador,"  musician  Bobby  Milano  recalls.  "Ed- 
e  Cantor  started  the  bicycle  thing.  You'd  see  Rudy  Vallee  rid- 
g  up  and  down  Palm  Canyon.  It  became  a  fad." 
One  day  in  1932,  as  the  story  goes,  actors  Charles  Farrell  and 
alph  Bellamy  were  bounced  off  El  Mirador's  only  tennis  court 
:cause  Marlene  Dietrich  wanted  to  play.  Two  years  later  they 
ok  their  revenge  and  opened  the  Racquet  Club,  with  two 
mrts,  on  200  acres  of  land  a  few  blocks  north  of  El  Mirador.  It 
;came  so  popular  with  the  Hollywood  crowd  that  in  short  or- 
;r  it  grew  to  include  12  courts,  a  swimming  pool,  locker  rooms, 
canteen,  bungalows,  and  the  Bamboo  Bar,  where  four  places  at 
le  end  were  permanently  reserved  with  brass  nameplates  for 
lark  Gable,  William  Powell,  Spencer  Tracy,  and  Farrell.  Gable 
.arried  Carole  Lombard  at  the  Racquet  Club,  and  Powell's  wife, 
lousie,  staged  fashion  shows  around  the  pool.  Rita  Hayworth, 
lickey  Rooney,  and  Lucille  Ball  and  Desi  Arnaz  were  regulars. 
rhe  Racquet  Club  was  really  the  beginning  of  Palm  Springs," 
lys  Kirk  Douglas.  "The  first  time  someone  took  me  there,  I 
as  just  a  kid,  fresh  from  Broadway.  I  looked  around  and— my 
rod!— there  was  Errol  Flynn.  Wow!  Humphrey  Bogart.  My  jaw 
rapped.  James  Cagney.  Spencer  Tracy  with  Katharine  Hep- 
am.  All  these  big  movie  stars,  and  I  felt  so  out  of  it." 
The  1930s  was  the  decade  when  Palm  Springs  really  started  to 
ving.  The  first  private  golf  course,  nine  holes  and  adjacent  to  the 
•esert  Inn,  had  been  built  by  Tom  O'Donnell,  a  Long  Beach  oil- 
lan.  Samuel  Untermyer,  a  New  York  attorney  whose  clients  in- 
uded  Rockefellers  and  Hearsts,  was  the  first  nationally  known 
tillionaire  to  build  a  house  in  the  town,  and  his  first  houseguest, 
l  1933,  was  Albert  Einstein.  Clara  Bow  and  Harold  Lloyd  were 
nong  the  first  movie  stars  to  build  their  own  houses.  The  first 
ightclub,  the  Chi  Chi,  opened  on  North  Palm  Canyon  Drive  in 
?38.  It  was  soon  followed  by  the  Ranch  Club,  nicknamed  the 
link  and  Manure  Club,  where  the  movie  stars  and  socialites  who 
ayed  at  El  Mirador  and  the  Desert  Inn  mingled  at  barbecues  and 
ances  with  the  cowboys  who  worked  at  the  fashionable  new  dude 
inches  outside  of  town:  Deepwell,  Smoke  Tree,  and  the  B-Bar-H. 
leanwhile,  in  Cathedral  City,  three  illegal  but  glamorous  gam- 


bling clubs— the  Dunes,  the  139,  and  the  Cove— were  all  the  rage. 
In  1938,  Palm  Springs  was  incorporated  as  a  city,  with  a  pop- 
ulation of  5,336.  That  same  year,  the  first  shopping  center  in  South- 
ern California,  La  Plaza,  opened  on  South  Palm  Canyon  Drive 
one  block  south  of  the  Desert  Inn.  It  was  commissioned  by  Jul- 
ia Carnell,  a  frequent  Desert  Inn  guest,  who  imported  architect 
Harry  Williams— the  father  of  Stewart  Williams— from  Dayton, 
Ohio,  where  he  had  designed  several  factories  for  her  husband's 
National  Cash  Register  Company.  Stewart  Williams,  now  90, 
says,  "It  was  Mediterranean-style,  but  it  was  made  of  reinforced- 
concrete  block,  and  it  really  set  the  standard  for  Palm  Springs, 
which  was  just  a  little  village  that  had  grown  like  Topsy  along 
the  highway.  The  first  architect  here  was  John  Porter  Clark.  Al- 
bert Frey  came  out  and  joined  him.  My  dad  came  back  in  1941, 
and  my  brother  and  I  came  in  1946.  We  opened  a  small  office 
and  called  it  Williams,  Williams  &  Williams.  And  they  had 
Clark  &  Frey.  We  were  the  only  two  firms  in  Palm  Springs." 

Before  immigrating  to  America,  the  Swiss-born  Al- 
bert Frey  had  assisted  Le  Corbusier  on  his  1929 
Villa  Savoye,  outside  Paris.  More  than  any  other 
architect,  Frey  is  identified  with  Palm  Springs 
modernism.  He  arrived  in  1934  and  died  in 
November  1998  at  age  95  in  his  Frey  House 
II,  an  aluminum-glass-and-cinder-block  box  built 
around  a  boulder  and  perched  on  the  side  of  Mount  San  Jacin- 
to. Frey's  first  project  was  a  real-estate  sales  office  on  North 
Palm  Canyon  Drive,  and  its  impact  was  significant,  because  it 
was  one  of  the  first  buildings  people  saw  as  they  drove  into  town. 
In  1937,  Richard  Neutra,  the  Austrian-born  disciple  of  Frank 
Lloyd  Wright  who  had  settled  in  Los  Angeles  in  1925,  built  his 
first  house  in  Palm  Springs,  for  Grace  Lewis  Miller,  the  wealthy 
widow  of  a  St.  Louis  surgeon,  and  it  also  had  a  great  influence 
on  the  future  of  local  architecture. 

Frey  built  eight  more  projects,  including  the  San  Jacinto  Hotel 
and  the  Cathedral  City  Elementary  School,  before  the  Japanese 
attack  on  Pearl  Harbor  in  1941  brought  an  abrupt  stop  to  con- 
struction in  the  desert  resort.  During  the  war,  the  U.S.  Army  con- 
verted the  El  Mirador  into  the  Torney  General  Hospital,  which 
treated  more  than  19,000  servicemen  in  four  years,  and  construct- 
ed a  large  airfield  east  of  the  city,  which  would  become  the  Palm 
Springs  International  Airport.  "Before  the  war  we  grew  very  slow- 
ly," says  Frank  Bogert.  "But  there  were  an  awful  lot  of  people  who 
came  down  to  visit  soldiers  in  the  hospital.  And  they  discovered 
Palm  Springs.  So  after  the  war  there  was  a  surge  of  new  people." 
"I  was  working  on  a  Sunday,"  Stewart  Williams  recalls,  "and 
Frank  Sinatra  just  walked  in  the  door.  He  had  a  little  white  sailor 
hat  on,  and  he  had  an  ice-cream  cone  in  his  hand.  He  said,  'I 
want  to  build  a  house.  My  only  requirement  is  I  want  to  be  in  by 
Christmas.'  This  was  May,  so  that  was  quite  a  requirement.  We 
had  a  contractor  who  put  three  shifts  a  day  in  and  worked  24 
hours  around  the  clock,  and  got  it  done." 

It  was  1947,  and  Sinatra,  then  31,  had  visited  Palm  Springs  for 
the  first  time  the  year  before  with  his  wife,  Nancy,  and  their  chil- 
dren, Nancy  junior  and  Frank  junior.  He  fell  in  love  with  the 
place  immediately,  and  for  the  next  50  years  considered  it  his 
real  home.  The  low-slung,  redwood-clad  four-bedroom  house 
Stewart  Williams  built  for  him  on  Alejo  Road  was  so  far  out  in 
the  desert  to  the  east  of  the  Movie  Colony  that  Sinatra  illumi- 
nated a  pair  of  palms  in  the  front  yard  at  night  so  that  his  friends 
could  spot  it  from  a  distance.  The  house  is  called  Twin  Palms, 


J  N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


2  OS 


and  "  -  i    I  iture  ia  the  piano-shaped  pool,  "It's 

eel  ingle  with  a  curve  On  it,"  says  Williams.  "I  didn't  think 
ol  a  pi  i 

ii  boom  was  on  <  harlie  I  anvil  was  elected  mayor 

in  1948,  and  soon  alter  began  co-starnnu  with  Gale  Storm  in  the 

pop     i  iv  series  My  IMde  Margie.  FarreU  had  Frey  design  sever- 
al lieu  bungalows,  and  the  stars  and  starlets  poured  in    Rita  Hay- 
worth,  dene  Tiernev,  Marilyn  Monroe,  Donna  Reed,  Tony  Curtis, 
Mick.'   Roonej    El  Mirador  reopened  in  1952. 
and  the  Chi  Chi  expanded,  offering  such  head- 
liners  as  Sophie  Tucker,  Nat  King  Cole,  Peggy 
I  ee,  and  Lena  Home.  New  hotels  multiplied: 
the  Riviera  had  the  town's  first  convention  cen- 
ter; the  Spa  Hotel  was  erected  over  the  original 
hot  springs  in  the  center  of  town,  on  land  leased 
for  99  years  from  the  Agua  Caliente  Indians. 


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, 

Producer  William  Frye,  who  start- 
ed coming  to  Palm  Springs  in 
1947,  recalls  what  it  was  like  in 
those  days:  "I  stayed  at  Deepwell 
Ranch.  It  was  tremendous— hun- 
dreds of  acres.  That's  where  I  met 
Loretta  Young.  All  the  stars  loved 
it  down  there— Roz  Russell,  Howard  Hughes, 
Robert  Taylor  with  Barbara  Stanwyck  when  they 
were  married.  They  had  horses.  No  golf.  And  little  cottages— you 
didn't  own  them,  you  just  rented  them.  And  you  all  ate  in  a  fam- 
ily room.  Not  fancy— you  went  through  the  kitchen  to  get  your 
food.  After  breakfast,  we  usually  went  on  rides,  way  up  into  the 
canyons.  They'd  bring  up  a  chuck  wagon.  We'd  sit  by  the  falls — 
that's  where  they  shot  Lost  Horizon— and  have  a  wonderful  lunch. 
We  wouldn't  get  back  until  four  in  the  afternoon.  Then  we'd  go 
for  a  swim  in  the  pool.  It  was  not  luxury,  but  it  was  comfort.  You 
know,  wonderful  old  beamed  rooms  with  fireplaces.  We'd  have 
dinner  and  then  sit  around  the  piano.  Hoagy  Carmichael  would 
sing.  And  we'd  go  to  bed  early.  Saturday  and  Sunday  nights,  we 
went  to  the  Racquet  Club.  That  was  the  place." 

As  time  went  on,  more  and  more  stars  built  houses  of  their 
own,  in  the  Movie  Colony,  around  the  Racquet  Club,  and  in 
Las  Palmas,  which,  because  its  walled  properties  were  nestled  in 
the  shadow  of  Mount  San  Jacinto  on  the  west  side  of  Palm 
Canyon  Drive,  offered  the  most  privacy.  On  one  street  alone 
there,  Via  Lola,  homeowners  included  Jack  and  Ann  Warner, 
Moss  Hart  and  Kitty  Carlisle,  Kirk  and  Anne  Douglas,  and 
Winthrop  and  Jeannette  Rockefeller.  Dean  Martin,  Lew  and  Edie 
Wasserman,  songwriter  Sammy  Cahn,  and  gossip  columnist 
Rona  Barrett  all  lived  within  three  blocks,  and  novelist  Harold 
Robbins  lived  around  the  corner.  Mary  Martin  was  on  Camino 
Norte,  Claudette  Colbert  was  on  Camino  Mirasol,  and  Jack  and 
Mary  Benny  were  on  Vista  Chino.  Liberace's  house  on  Belardo 
Road  had  a  candelabra  over  the  front  door. 

The  Smoke  Tree  Ranch  was  one  of  the  first  residential  enclaves 
in  Palm  Springs  to  be  set  up  as  a  private  club.  Extremely  under- 
stated and  exclusive— some  say  restricted— it  attracted  mainly  "old 
families  from  Washington,  Oregon,  and  California,  plus  a  lot  of 
Chicago  people,"  according  to  one  local  observer.  The  only  Hol- 
lywood name  there  was  Walt  Disney.  All  houses  have  to  be  built 
and  landscaped  in  a  western,  desert  style  to  maintain  the  ranch- 
like atmosphere.  Addresses  are  designated  by  numbers  painted 
on  whitewashed  rocks  which  lie  flat  on  the  ground.  No  working 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


HL 


- 


THE  OLD  GUARD 

From  top:  Eunice  Johnson,  producer  of  the  Ehony  Fashion  Fair 
and  wife  of  fAw/v-magazine  owner  John  Johnson,  at  the 
entrance  of  their  house  on  Southridge  Drive;  retired  Hollywood 
producers  William  Frye  and  James  Wharton  in  their  home 
at  the  Ironwood  Country  Club  in  Palm  Desert;  Kirk  and 
Anne  Douglas  at  home  in  Las  Palmas. 


ARTS  AND  ENTERTAINMENT 


Clockwise  from  top  left:  artist  Gant  Gaither 
with  his  pug  in  the  living  room  of  his  1970s  ranch 
house  near  the  Movie  Colony;  Bechtel  heiress 
Megan  Johnstone  at  the  Palm  Springs  Classic 
Horse  Show  at  the  HITS  Desert  Horse  Park  in 
Indio;  art  collectors  Cargill  and  Donna  MacMillan 
in  their  living  room  at  the  Vintage  Club,  with 
glass  sculptures  by  Dale  Chihuly;  singer  Keely 
Smith  in  the  Palm  Springs  house  she  shares  with 
musician  Bobby  Milano;  George  Montgomery, 
actor  and  artist,  at  an  exhibition  of  his  work 
at  the  Palm  Springs  Desert  Museum;  a  Neutra 
kitchen  clock  in  the  Kaufmann  House. 


i     Smoke  free  Inn,  and  outsiders  must  have 

-it  made  by  a  resident,  or  colonist,  a  thej 

i   jo  .11  the  market,"  Nelda  Linsk  says. 

.1  down."  When  the  communal  ranch  house  was 

destroyed  in  a  fire  in  1991,  ii  was  reconstructed  exactly  as  it  was 

built  in  the  1930s,  At  dinner,  colonists  still  get  their 

I. nclien  and  eat  at  communal  tables.  Former  While 

House  chief  of  protocol  Joseph  Verner  Reed,  who  frequents  Palm 

says,  "Smoke  Tree  is  the  Hobe  Sound  of  the  West." 

The  opening  of  the  Thunderbird  Country  Club  in 
1951  and  the  Tamarisk  Country  Club  a  year  later 
set  the  course  of  development  in  the  Coachella 
Valley  for  the  rest  of  the  century.  They  became 
the  models  for  the  more  than  50  gated,  private 
clubs  with  houses  built  around  golf  courses 
which  now  blanket  Rancho  Mirage,  Palm  Desert, 
Indian  Wells,  and  La  Quinta.  By  the  1980s,  Down  Valley,  as 
these  newer  cities  are  collectively  known,  had  eclipsed  old  Palm 
Springs  in  population,  wealth,  and  glamour. 

Frank  Bogert  recalls  the  founding  of  the  first  two  country 
clubs:  "I  built  Thunderbird  as  a  dude  ranch  right  after  the  war, 
and  then  we  turned  it  into  a  golf  club.  What  happened  was  I 
went  traveling  all  over  the  country  to  promote  my  dude  ranch, 
and  every  place  I'd  go  people  would  say,  'I  love  Palm  Springs, 
but  you  don't  have  an  18-hole  golf  course.'  I  came  back  deter- 
mined to  build  one.  I  got  ahold  of  Johnny  Dawson,  who  was  the 
No.  1  amateur  in  the  United  States,  and  we  bought  80  acres  ad- 
joining my  750  acres.  We  had  20  people  put  up  $5,000  each.  I 
got  a  loan  from  Franklin  Life  for  $300,000.  Then  I  got  a  good 
friend  of  mine  to  put  in  $400,000  worth  of  pipes,  and  he  said, 
'You  can  pay  me  whenever  you  can.'  We  were  the  first  golf 
course  to  put  houses  around  the  fairways.  I  was  having  a  hard 
time  selling  the  lots,  but  when  Hope  and  Crosby  bought,  every- 
body came.  Desi  and  Lucy  built  a  house.  Leonard  Firestone  built 
a  house.  And  Phil  Harris  was  also  one  of  the  first  houses  there. 

"What  happened  with  Tamarisk  is,  I  had  about  19  Jewish 
people  who  wanted  to  get  in  Thunderbird.  And  I  had  invited 
them  all  and  had  them  all  set  to  get  in.  And  then  we  had  a 
meeting.  One  of  the  guys  who'd  put  up  $5,000,  and  who  was 
Jewish,  got  up  and  said  everything  that  anybody  could  say  bad 
about  the  Jewish  people.  So  with  that,  the  rest  said,  'Well,  hell, 
if  a  Jew  doesn't  want  them  in  here,  let's  not  have  any.'  I  had  to 
write  letters  to  all  these  people  who  were  real  good  friends  of 
mine— most  of  them— saying,  'You  have  failed  to  pass  the  mem- 
bership committee.'  And  that  group  went  over  and  built  Tam- 
arisk. Their  first  president  was  a  non-Jewish  guy,  but  the  rest  of 
them  were  all  Jewish.  They  got  the  best  greenskeeper  in  the 
country.  They  built  the  best  clubhouse.  And  Ben  Hogan  was 
their  pro  for  a  while.  They  had  the  best  club  by  far  in  town. 
Sinatra  bought  five  lots  and  put  in  a  house." 

Both  Thunderbird  and  Tamarisk  had  architect  William  Cody 
design  sleek,  modern  clubhouses,  and  Richard  Neutra  was  com- 
missioned by  Minneapolis  art  collectors  Samuel  and  Luella 
Maslon  to  build  a  large  house  on  their  Tamarisk  lot.  Luella  Mas- 
Ion,  now  93,  is  still  living  in  the  house,  which  is  one  of  the  mod- 
ernist gems  of  the  area,  remarkable  for  such  details  as  a  built-in 
soda  fountain  in  the  kitchen  and  luggage  closets  for  houseguests. 
Other  well-known  Tamarisk  residents  have  included  Red  Skelton, 
producer  Hal  Wallis,  and  billionaire  Marvin  Davis  and  his  wife, 
Barbara.  But  the  dominant  figure  was  always  Frank  Sinatra,  who 


bought  a  tWO-bedroom  house  on  the  17th  fairway  in  1957.  slior 

aftei  ins  divorce  from  his  second  wile,  Ava  Gardner. 

With  Dean  Martin  and  Sammy  Cahn  already  ensconced 
Las  Palmas,  Palm  Springs'  Rat  Pack  period  began.  Sinalr 
cronies  Sammy  Davis  Jr.,  comedian  Pat  Henry,  and  restauratel 
Jilly  Rizzo  bought  three  houses  in  a  row,  around  the  corn 
from  his.  "Pat  Henry's  house  was  in  the  middle,"  recalls  sing 
Keely  Smith,  who  started  coming  to  Palm  Springs  with  Lou 
Prima  in  the  50s.  "And  one  time  when  he  went  away  it  w; 
robbed.  He'd  always  say,  'I  knew  I  shouldn't  have  told  two  on 
eyed  guys  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  house.'" 

"We'd  all  come  down  on  September  28,  when  Ruby's  Duni 
opened  for  the  season,"  says  Anne  Douglas.  "It  was  the  meetir 
place.  They  had  homemade  matzo-ball  soup.  Frank  loved 
there.  For  some  reason,  he  wouldn't  go  to  the  Racquet  Club.  B 
sically,  he  wanted  to  have  everybody  over  to  his  house  eve: 
night.  Somebody  always  called  and  said,  'You  want  to  ea 
Frank's  cooking  spaghetti  tonight.'  You  just  went  for  the  me; 
The  projection  room  was  added  later  on— then  it  became  tl 
meal  and  a  movie." 

Over  the  years,  Sinatra  turned  his  two-and-a-half-acre  proper 
into  a  walled  compound,  with  nine  guest  bedrooms,  two  pools, 
tennis  court,  and  a  helipad.  The  last  was  installed  in  the  expect 
tion  that  Sinatra's  new  best  friend,  President  John  F  Kennec 
would  use  the  compound  as  his  West  Coast  White  House.  I 
stead,  at  the  insistence  of  Attorney  General  Bobby  Kennedy,  wfc 
was  concerned  about  Sinatra's  Mafia  connections,  the  preside: 
stayed  at  Bing  Crosby's  house  in  Thunderbird. 

Sinatra  was  so  incensed  that  he  became  a  Republican,  ar 
even  went  as  far  as  to  put  up  Spiro  Agnew  after  he  resign* 
from  the  vice-presidency  in  disgrace.  There  was  never  a  shorta 
of  houseguests.  Everyone  from  Elizabeth  Taylor  and  Richai 
Burton  to  Princess  Grace  and  Prince  Rainier  of  Monaco  can 
to  stay  at  the  compound.  After  1976,  when  Sinatra  married 
fourth  wife,  Barbara,  the  ex-wife  of  Zeppo  Marx,  who  also  ha 
a  house  in  Tamarisk,  he  became  even  more  social.  Rose  Nan 
says  she  will  never  forget  her  first  invitation  to  the  Sinatras',  fil 
Easter  lunch  in  1991.  "Seated  around  the  table  were  GregoJ 
and  Veronique  Peck,  Roger  and  Louisa  Moore,  R.  J.  Wagnq 
Jill  St.  John,  and  Altovise  Davis.  There  was  an  empty  seat  nej 
to  me,  and  then  this  man  sat  down,  put  his  hand  out  to  m| 
and  said,  'Clint.  Clint  Eastwood.'  I  said,  'I  know.  I  know.'" 

Many  were  shocked  when  the  Sinatra  compound  was  put 
the  market  in  1995,  three  years  before  his  death.  It  was  bougfl 
by  Canadian  businessman  Jim  Pattison  for  $4.9  million  and 
reportedly  on  the  market  again.  "There  was  always  excitemeJ 
when  Frank  was  in  town,"  says  Connie  Stevens,  who  owns| 
house  in  Palm  Desert  and  starred  in  the  1963  movie  Palm  Sprin, 
Weekend.  "There  was  an  electric  charge.  You  could  feel  him.  Ar 
I  truly  believe  that  when  someone  is  really  strong,  and  they  real 
loved  a  place,  after  they've  gone,  they  hover." 

Barbara  Sinatra  now  rents  a  house  in  Thunderbird  Height 
overlooking  the  Thunderbird  Country  Club.  Every  February  si 
chairs  the  Frank  Sinatra  Celebrity  Invitational  Golf  Tournamei 
to  raise  money  for  the  Barbara  Sinatra  Children's  Center,  whic 
she  and  Frank  founded  in  1986  to  treat  abused  children  an 
which  is  located  next  to  the  Betty  Ford  Center  on  the  Eisenho\ 
er  Medical  Center  campus  in  Rancho  Mirage.  This  year,  loo! 
ing  glamorous  in  a  black  pantsuit  and  white  shirt  set  off  with 
big  diamond  cross,  she  listened  as  the  president  of  the  ch 
dren's  center,  William  Osterman,  welcomed  guests  to  a  midde 


VANITY     FAIR 


JUNE     19' 


Worman  Mailers  1955  novel,  The  Deer  Park,  was  set 
here.  He  disguised  Palm  Springs  as  Desert  D'Or. 


ector  Michael  Lii 
li  companion  Lisa 
he  l»le-1950s  uou* 
mhl  in  the  siihdivisio 
ta  Jt*s  I'aJ 


L 


toui  s 1 1   s  up  there  handling 

i  br  u      he  said,  and  the  crowd 

1      up  ti    i     ind  Barbara's 
down 

w[\ /I )  I  ithei  got  in  a  helicopter  with  Hob 

IV!  and  they  flew  all  around 

nyons  here  to  pick  the  most  beautiful 

locate  this  club.  Ami  they  had  every- 

-  -elect  from  in  those  clays    they  could 

have  bought  any  of  this  land.  So  that's  how 

Eldorado  was  started."  Carol  Price,  the  wile 
of  Charles  Price,  who  was  Ronald  Reagan's 
ambassador  to  Belgium  and  Great  Britain,  is 
having  lunch  in  the  clubhouse  of  the  Eldo- 
rado Country  Club  in  Indian  Wells.  From 
its  founding  in  1957  by  a  group  including 
her  father.  W.  Clarke  Swanson  of  the  Oma- 
ha frozen-foods  Swansons,  and  Bob  McCul- 
loch,  a  Los  Angeles  businessman,  Eldorado 
has  been  the  most  exclusive  and  prestigious 
country  club  in  the  Coachella  Valley.  Last 
year,  members  whisper,  President  Clintons 
request  to  jog  on  the  grounds  was  turned 
down.  "We  have  Ford  as  a  member.  We 
have  Bush.  We  have  Reagan.  That's  plenty 
of  presidents  for  us,"  one  member  snaps. 

The  stunning,  brick-and-glass  gatehouse 
and  the  clubhouse  were  designed  by  Wil- 
liam Cody,  and  many  of  the  original  mem- 
bers came  here  from  Smoke  Tree  and  Thun- 
derbird  They  were  a  mix  of  old  money  from 
Texas  and  California  (the  Moncrieffs,  the 
Frenches,  the  Dohenys,  the  Kecks),  conser- 
vative Hollywood  (Randolph  Scott,  Jimmy 
Stewart,  Greer  Garson),  and  the  Los  Angeles 
tycoons  who  would  form  Reagan's  Kitchen 
Cabinet  (Holmes  Tuttle,  Justin  Dart,  Earle 
Jorgensen).  "It  was  awfully  cliquish,"  says 
William  Frye,  who  used  to  stay  at  Eldorado 
with  Rosalind  Russell  and  Frederick  Brisson. 
"You  didn't  see  lots  of  people." 

A  key  founding  member  was  Freeman 
Gosden,  who  played  Amos  on  the  Amos  and 
Andy  radio  show  and  was  a  close  confidant 
of  President  Eisenhower's.  The  president  first 
came  to  Palm  Springs  for  a  week  in  1954.  He 
stayed  at  Smoke  Tree  at  the  house  of  Paul 
Helms,  the  Los  Angeles  bakery  tycoon,  and 
played  golf  with  Ben  Hogan  at  Tamarisk  and 
with  John  Dawson  at  Thunderbird.  The  re- 
sulting coverage  made  Palm  Springs  world- 
famous  for  the  first  time.  Eisenhower  made 
many  return  visits  to  Palm  Springs,  and 
when  he  left  the  White  House  in  1961,  he 
was  given  lifetime  use  of  a  house  facing  the 
fairway  of  the  11th  hole  at  Eldorado.  He  be- 
came so  identified  with  Eldorado  that  the 
mountain  overlooking  the  club  came  to  be 
called  Mount  Eisenhower. 

i\V  Then  you  played  golf  with  General 
W  Eisenhower,  no  one  ever  spoke,"  re- 
calls Lee  Annenberg,  sitting  in  the  6,400- 
square-foot  living  room  at  Sunnylands,  the 
Annenbergs'  250-acre  estate  in  Rancho  Mi- 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


rage,  which  has  its  own  nine-hole  golf  course. 
Her  mint-green  I  scada  jacket  almost  matches 

the  celadon  walls  on  which  hang  more  than 

10  masterpieces  by  van  Gogh,  Gauguin,  Ce- 
zanne, Seurat,  Monet,  Renoir,  Degas.  Matisse. 
and  Picasso.  "There  was  this  silence.  He  was 
very  serious  about  his  golf.  And  he  always 
wanted  to  be  called  '(ieneral,'  and  we  all  be- 
came very  good  friends.  He  was  a  chef.  He 
loved  to  cook  steaks,  and  he  would  put  on 
an  apron  and  a  high,  tall  chef  hat  and  do  de- 
licious barbecued  steaks.  They  had  their 
friends  at  the  club— the  Darts  and  the  Gos- 
dens  and  the  Tuttles.  The  Firestones.  It  was 
like  a  big,  happy  group.  They  had  us  over  from 
time  to  time,  and  they  came  here  from  time 
to  time.  He  came  here  for  golfing  and  fish- 
ing. We  had  the  lake  stocked  with  fish,  and 
as  he  got  older  and  it  was  harder  for  him  to 
play  golf,  he  would  come  over  here  and  fish." 

Sunnylands  was  designed  by  A.  Quincy 
Jones,  a  second-generation  Los  Angeles  mod- 
ernist who  later  became  the  dean  of  the 
School  of  Architecture  at  the  University  of 
Southern  California.  All  of  the  furniture  was 
designed  by  Billy  Haines  and  Ted  Graber, 
the  Hollywood  interior  decorators  known  for 
their  sleek,  comfortable  style.  The  house  was 
completed  in  1966.  "When  we  had  our  first 
meeting,  the  only  thing  I  said  was  'I  have  a 
feeling  I'd  like  a  Mayan  roof,'"  Lee  Annen- 
berg says.  "And  today  it's  become  a  well-known 
home.  It  was  declared  a  national  historical 
site,  because  during  the  Bush  administration 
the  White  House  gave  a  dinner  here  for  Prime 
Minister  Kaifu  of  Japan." 

In  fact,  since  the  Annenbergs  opened  Sun- 
nylands, every  occupant  of  the  White  House 
except  Lyndon  Johnson  and  Jimmy  Carter 
has  come  to  call.  "Even  Hillary  Clinton's 
been  here,"  says  Lee  Annenberg.  "President 
Clinton  came  to  see  the  art,  but  he  didn't 
stay  overnight.  President  Bush  has  been  here 
lots  of  times.  And  President  Reagan,  of 
course,  all  the  time.  President  Ford.  Presi- 
dent Nixon.  Ike I  pinch  myself  to  believe 

that  I  am  living  in  this  house  and  have  led 
the  wonderful  life  I've  had.  I  mean,  Prince 
Charles  has  been  here  twice.  Prince  Andrew 
has  been  here  twice.  The  Queen  and  Prince 
Philip  have  been  here.  We've  had  a  lot  of  in- 
teresting people  in  and  out  of  this  house." 
Pointing  to  the  loggia  outside,  she  says, 
"Right  over  there,  at  that  table.  President 
Nixon  told  me  he  had  asked  Walter  to  be  his 
ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James's." 

Walter  Annenberg  served  as  ambassador 
to  Great  Britain  from  1969  to  1974.  During 
that  period,  Lee  Annenberg  says,  "we  hardly 
came  here  at  all.  And  the  pictures  only  came 
when  we  left  London."  The  Annenbergs  now 
divide  the  year  between  Philadelphia's  Main 
Line  and  Rancho  Mirage.  Every  year,  at  the 
end  of  April,  the  paintings  at  Sunnylands 
are  packed  and  sent  by  private  plane  to  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  in  New  York, 


.;. 


where  they  hang  until  the  middle  of  Novem 
ber,  when  they  are  packed  and  flown  backi 
out  to  the  desert. 

"Some  say  the  official  social  season  clos' 
es  when  the  Annenbergs  leave  on  May  1,' 
remarks  Merv  Griffin,  who  spends  wintei 
weekends  at  his  240-acre  horse  farm  in  Li   ! 
Quinta.  Or,  as  Dolores  Hope  puts  it,  "Any 
place  the  Annenbergs  go,  they  make  a  big 
difference."  Since  they  arrived  in  Palrr. 
Springs,  the  Annenbergs  have  helped  tc    : 
found  and  fund  the  Eisenhower  Medica 
Center,  the  Palm  Springs  Desert  Museum 
and  the  McCallum  Theatre  in  Palm  Desertip 
And  when  Ronald  and  Nancy  Reagan  were 
in  the  White  House,  Sunnylands  was  thi 
place  to  be  on  New  Year's  Eve. 

"We  had  nine  tables,  and  Tony  Rose's  Or  P 
chestra,  and,  boy,  did  we  really  have  fun,'  I 
says  Lee  Annenberg.  "Bob  and  Dolores  - 
would  entertain.  Dinah  Shore  entertained. 

Everybody  entertained Frank  and  Bar 

bara  came  here  for  a  while,  but  Sinatra  die   ' 
not  like  to  entertain  at  friends'  houses.  In  al  I] 
the  years  I  knew  him,  only  once  did  he  evei  - 
sing  here,  when  we  were  only  about  12  anc 
most  of  the  people  were  his  houseguests." 

This  year's  New  Year's  Eve  party,  which 
attended,  was  a  much  more  subdued  affair  I 
The  guest  list  was  down  to  four  tables,  most-  f 
ly  what's  left  of  the  core  Reagan  circle— Betsy  I 
Bloomingdale,  Charles  and  Mary  Jane  Wick,  :  ( 
Aimand  and  Harriet  Deutsch,  Charles  and  ' 
Carol  Price,  former  ambassador  to  the  Vati-  p 
can  William  Wilson,  Earle  Jorgensen,  who  is  1 
100,  and  his  wife,  Marion— plus  Kirk  and  p 
Anne  Douglas  and  Sidney  and  Alexandra  K 
Sheldon.  After  dinner,  Lee  Annenberg  made  It ; 
a  toast:  "I'd  like  you  all  to  think  for  a  mo-  kl 
ment  of  our  beloved  Ronnie  and  Nancy,  who  ■ 
can't  be  here  tonight,  and  of  all  the  other  ■ 
friends  who  aren't  here  anymore."  It  was  all  m 
over  at  10  minutes  past  midnight.  As  guests  inr 
lined  up  to  say  good  night,  Walter  Annen-  m 
berg,  91,  told  each  one,  "I  hope  you  get  ■ 
everything  you  deserve  and  more." 

All  through  the  70s  and  80s,  Down  Val-  I 
ley  boomed.  In  1978,  after  leaving  the  < I 
White  House,  Gerald  and  Betty  Ford  built  a  k 
house  in  Thunderbird  next  door  to  Leonard  )  i 
Firestone,  who  had  been  Ford's  ambassador  p 
to  Belgium.  The  former  president  says,  "We  ki 
looked  at  Florida.  We  looked  at  Pebble  I 
Beach.  But  they  were  damp,  windy.  And  k 
Mrs.  Ford  had  arthritis."  Betty  Ford  adds, 
"There  were  a  lot  of  golf  courses  here,  too." 
In  1982,  with  Firestone's  help,  the  former  k 
First  Lady  opened  the  Betty  Ford  Center  for  1 [ 
the  treatment  of  alcoholism  and  drug  abuse  k 
on  nearby  Bob  Hope  Drive.  Although  the  n 
Fords  also  have  a  house  in  Vail,  Colorado,  n 
they  spend  the  larger  part  of  the  year  in  kj 
Rancho  Mirage,  and  Betty  Ford  spends  time  »  ft 
almost  every  day  at  her  center. 

In  1979,  the  Vintage  Club  opened  next  to  k 

JUNE      1999 


li 


lorado.  It  was  allegedly  the  most  expensive 
b  at  the  time-lots  started  at  $330,000- 
1  the  first  one  with  two  18-hole  golf  courses, 
rmer  Chrysler  chairman  Lee  Iacocca,  Ger- 
jn  art  collector  Gunther  Sachs,  former 
tlfstream  Aerospace  chairman  Allen  Paul- 
1,  grain  exporter  Cargill  MacMillan  and 

wife,  Donna,  the  Nordstrom  retailing 
lily  of  Seattle,  and  Microsoft  chairman 
1  Gates's  father  are  among  those  who 
n  property. 

But  as  El  Paseo  in  Palm  Desert  evolved 
3  the  Rodeo  Drive  of  the  Coachella  Valley 
i  the  per  capita  net  worth  in  Indian  Wells 
ired  until  it  was  reputedly  the  highest  in 

nation,  old  Palm  Springs  withered.  The 
:sert  Inn  was  long  gone,  replaced  by  a 
ipping  center.  El  Mirador  had  been  torn 
wn  in  1973  to  make  way  for  the  Desert 
tspital.  The  Racquet  Club  had  changed 
nership  several  times,  before  falling  into 
i  hands  of  Larry  Lawrence,  the  owner  of 
!  Hotel  del  Coronado  in  San  Diego,  who 
my  years  later  would  become  posthu- 
>usly  infamous  for  faking  a  war  record, 
iich  led  to  his  being  disinterred  from  Ar- 
gton  National  Cemetery. 
"Larry  Lawrence  destroyed  the  Racquet 
jb,"  declares  Gloria  Greer,  whose  "Stars 

the  Desert"  gossip  column  ran  for  years 
the  Riverside  Press-Enterprise  and  is  now 
evised  on  the  local  NBC  affiliate.  "After 

bought  it,  he  said,  'We  must  honor 
;arlie  Farrell  for  being  the  man  who  made 
lm  Springs.'  Within  less  than  a  year, 
larlie  Farrell  was  not  welcome  at  the  Rac- 
et  Club.  Then  he  said  he  had  to  open  it 
the  public  because  the  members  were  so 
eap  that  they  weren't  tipping  properly.  It 
is  almost  like  he  set  out  to  destroy  it." 
Meanwhile,  Palm  Springs  was  getting  a  rep- 
ition  for  hordes  of  unruly  students  pouring 
during  spring  break.  Frank  Bogert  says  that 
kept  the  problem  under  control  during  his 
st  stretch  as  mayor,  from  1958  to  1966,  but 
the  time  he  became  mayor  again,  in  1982, 

was  like  Dante's  Inferno.  Tahquitz  Canyon 
is  full  of  kids  camping  out  and  shacking 
i  with  each  other.  They'd  have  40  people 
one  room.  We  made  a  rule  that  you  could 
Jy  have  two  people  in  a  room.  And  finally 
:  got  the  idea  of  closing  Palm  Canyon 
rive  off  altogether  and  having  entertainment 
i  and  down  the  street."  In  1988,  Bogert  was 
cceeded  by  singer  Sonny  Bono,  who  in 
84  bought  a  house  in  the  La  Mesa  section, 
ar  Herman  Wouk  and  Suzanne  Somers, 
d  opened  a  restaurant  in  the  middle  of 
vn.  His  widow,  Congresswoman  Mary  Bono, 
:alls,  "What  Sonny  did  as  mayor  was  bring 
ention  to  the  need  for  special  events.  The 
m  festival  he  started  gets  bigger  and  better 
ery  year.  Sonny  likened  it  to  Cannes.  And 
>w  that  we  have  a  casino  at  the  Spa  Hotel, 
2re  are  some  who  envision  Palm  Springs  as 
ing  the  Monte  Carlo  of  California." 


Today,  from  Las  Palmas  to  La  Quinta, 
the  whole  Coachella  Valley  seems  richer 
than  ever.  In  the  winter  season,  more  pri- 
vate jets  land  at  the  Palm  Springs  airport  on 
any  given  day  than  commercial  flights,  and 
the  airport  at  Thermal,  out  near  Indio,  has 
been  improved  to  accommodate  G  Vs  and 
Citations.  Last  year  Samuel  Untermyer's  man- 
sion overlooking  old  Palm  Springs  opened 
as  the  Willows,  a  luxurious  eight-room  inn 
where  for  $425  a  night  you  can  sleep  in  the 
room  where  Albert  Einstein  often  stayed. 
Across  the  street,  the  lunch  crowd  in  the  gar- 
den of  Le  Vallauris,  the  town's  best  French 
restaurant,  ranges  from  Dale  Chihuly  to 
James  Galanos,  the  Los  Angeles  couturier, 
who  recently  bought  a  house  in  Las  Pal- 
mas. And  the  modernist  cult  just  keeps 
growing.  "You  can  still  buy  a  flat-roofed  60s 
house  with  sliding  glass  doors  to  the  pool 
for  $120,000,"  says  New  York  art  dealer 
John  Cheim,  who  stayed  in  the  Three 
Stooges  Bungalow  at  the  Estrella  Inn  on  his 
first  visit,  last  winter.  "I'm  going  out  there 
again  to  look  for  a  house.  You  know,  sell  a 
painting,  buy  a  house."  It  would  take  several 
paintings  to  buy  Laurence  Harvey's  1969 
Villa  Serena  in  Las  Palmas  for  $1.85  mil- 
lion, or  a  William  Cody-designed  ranch  in 
the  Movie  Colony  that  recently  sold  for  just 
under  $  1  million. 

According  to  real-estate  sources,  a  large 
percentage  of  the  buyers  in  Palm  Springs 
are  single  men  and  women,  and  affluent 
gays  are  very  much  part  of  the  mix  that 
makes  people  say  this  is  becoming  the 
South  Beach  of  the  West  Coast.  Every 
spring  the  Nabisco  Dinah  Shore  ladies' 
golf  tournament  attracts  thousands  of  les- 
bians and  the  White  Party  brings  in  close 
to  10,000  homosexual  men.  The  big  event 
Down  Valley  is  the  Palm  Springs  Classic 
Horse  Show  at  the  hits  Desert  Horse  Park 
in  Indio,  where  for  six  weeks  in  January, 
February,  and  March  the  likes  of  Charles 
and  Kim  Bronson,  TV  personalities  Kelsey 
Grammer  and  Melissa  Rivers,  Bechtel  heiress 
Megan  Johnstone,  Playtex  heiress  Vanessa 
Haas,  and  Suzanne  Saperstein,  the  wife  of 
Houston  news-helicopter  entrepreneur  David 
Saperstein,  set  up  tents  with  antique  fur- 
nishings and  sodded  front  lawns. 

"If  you're  gay,  you  want  to  be  in  Palm 
Springs,"  says  Gordon  Locksley.  "In  order 
to  live  Down  Valley,  you  have  to  be  re- 
tired, heterosexual,  have  two  children  and 
three  grandchildren— and  it  must  be  at  a 
golf  club."  But  not  all  the  big  money  pour- 
ing into  the  country  clubs  is  in  the  hands 
of  retirees.  Microsoft  chairman  Bill  Gates 
is  building  a  house  in  the  Reserve,  one  of 
the  newest  clubs  in  Palm  Desert,  where 
some  30  charter  members  are  said  to  have 
invested  more  than  $90  million.  At  Eldo- 
rado, the  talk  of  the  club  is  the  neoclassical 
villa  built  on  three  lots  by  Montana  min- 


ing tycoon  Dennis  Washington  and  his 
wife,  Phyllis.  There  are  "gold,"  "silver,"  and 
"copper"  guest  rooms,  and  Phyllis  Wash- 
ington had  so  many  surplus  antiques  and 
objets  d'art  that  she  opened  a  well-stocked 
shop  on  El  Paseo  in  February.  Meanwhile, 
in  Rancho  Mirage,  retired  timber  baron 
Tim  Blixseth  and  his  wife,  Edra,  are  con- 
structing a  new  house  with  the  area's  first 
private  18-hole  golf  course.  In  Palm  Springs 
itself,  one  of  the  most  sought-after  invita- 
tions is  to  Ponderose,  the  12-acre  ranch  of 
Bob  and  Jo  Pond,  which  has  six  enor- 
mous garages  for  his  collection  of  106  cars 
ranging  from  Pierce-Arrows  to  Thunder- 
birds.  In  1996,  Pond,  a  commercial  floor- 
cleaning  magnate  from  Minnesota,  built 
the  Palm  Springs  Air  Museum,  to  which 
he  donated  his  collection  of  World  War  I 
and  II  aircraft. 

There  are  even  some  new  old  stars  in 
town.  "Palm  Springs  is  now  my  personal  lit- 
tle haven,"  says  Loretta  Young,  86,  who 
bought  a  house  in  the  Deepwell  area  five 
years  ago.  "You  can  do  whatever  you  want 
to  do,  if  you  want  to  do  it.  Or  you  don't 
have  to  do  it  if  you  don't  want  to  do  it. 
And  they  really  don't  squash  you  the  way 
they  do  in  Beverly  Hills."  Her  friend  Jane 
Wyman,  85,  moved  to  Rancho  Mirage  three 
years  ago.  On  Saturdays  they  go  to  4:30 
Mass  at  St.  Louis  Catholic  Church  in  a 
working-class  Mexican  section  of  Cathedral 
City.  The  church  was  built  in  the  1960s 
with  funds  raised  largely  by  Dolly  Sinatra, 
the  mother  of  Frank.  "This  poor  church 
was  just  falling  apart  at  the  seams,"  says 
Wyman.  "Loretta  said,  'I'm  going  to  put  a 
new  altar  in.'  And  I  said,  'Well,  I  tell  you 
what  I'm  going  to  do.  I'm  going  to  carpet 
this  place,  or  we're  going  to  get  killed.'  Be- 
cause it  was  all  shredded  and  everything. 
So  she  put  in  an  altar,  with  a  wonderful 
crucifix,  lit  from  behind.  And  I  put  all  the 
carpets  in.  It  looks  like  a  whole  new 
church.  Then  we  had  other  little  things  that 
we  had  to  do,  such  as  the  sound  system." 

4T)  aim  Springs  would  be  nothing  if  it  was 
JL  just  out  in  a  flat  plain  like  Texas,"  says 
Stewart  Williams.  "As  far  as  I'm  concerned, 
the  mountains  make  Palm  Springs.  They've 
been  here  a  hell  of  a  long  time,  and  it  keeps 
reminding  you  that  you're  not  very  much  in 
the  scheme  of  things.  Here  I  am,  90  years 
old.  You  know,  all  these  things  that  I've 
done,  they're  not  really  very  important.  You 
can  add  that  to  your  story.  You  can  also  add 
that  I'm  the  last  of  the  Mohicans.  All  the  rest 
of  them  are  gone.  Every  one  of  the  guys  that 
lived  here  and  did  all  this  work  is  gone  now." 
Two  months  before  Albert  Frey  died,  he 
was  asked  in  an  interview  for  Tlie  New  York 
Times  if  he  thought  his  house  had  with- 
stood the  test  of  time.  He  answered.  "It  is 
forever  young."  □ 


N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Queen  Noor 


212 


dollars  on  jewel 
:\  abr<  i  despite  the  povertj  of  the  Jorda- 
lomj  thai  she  was  secretly  a  tool 
I  A  thai  her  children  were  on 
Iri  even  that  the  queen— a  towering 
who  has  Arab  blood  on  her  father's 
i  whose  mother  is  Swedish— was 
eallj  Jewish,  the  ultimate  insult  in  the 
Arab  world.  During  King  Hussein's  cancer 
treatments,  Princess  Sarvath  was  also  per- 
ceived as  behaving  as  if  her  husband's  suc- 
cession were  a  fait  accompli.  She  was  even 
accused  of  redecorating  the  king's  offices. 
"Very  tacky,"  says  one  Jordanian  official. 
"Both  of  them  acted  as  if  the  king  was  go- 
ing to  die— and  as  if  they  didn't  care." 

But  even  from  Minnesota  the  king  was 
paying  close  attention,  and  in  his  final  letter 
to  Prince  Hassan  he  made  his  bitterness  ex- 
plicit: "My  small  family  was  hurt  by  slan- 
der and  falsehoods  and  I  refer  here  to  my 
wife  and  children. ...  I  attributed  it  to  the 
tendency  towards  rivalry  among  those  who 
pretend  to  be  faithful  to  you."  King  Hussein 
was  also  angry  about  Prince  Hassan's  long- 
standing refusal  to  promise  that,  if  he  be- 
came king,  he  would  name  Prince  Hamzah 
as  crown  prince:  "You  were  completely  op- 
posed to  this  until  the  time  you  would  have 
assumed  the  throne  and  decided  who  would 
have  been  your  successor." 

So  when  the  king  finally  chose  the  pre- 
sumably more  compliant  Abdullah  (in  ac- 
cordance with  the  Jordanian  constitution, 
which  names  the  eldest  son  as  the  monarch's 
heir),  many  observers  perceived  Queen  Noor 
as  having  lost  a  high-stakes  power  struggle. 
"If  there  was  a  battle  between  Noor  and 
Hassan,  neither  of  them  won,"  one  Jordan- 
ian commented  to  me.  "The  unexpected 
happened:  Abdullah  came  up  like  a  jack-in- 
the-box.  He  was  somebody  no  one  ever 
speculated  about." 

Friends  report  that  Prince  Hassan,  while 
resigned  to  his  fate,  is  both  grief-stricken  and 
bitter,  feeling  unjustly  accused.  Although  pal- 
ace sources  acknowledge  that  there  was  in- 
disputably a  "propaganda  campaign"  against 
Queen  Noor,  she  herself  will  not  say  any- 
thing negative  about  Prince  Hassan  or  her 
sister-in-law.  "We're  family,"  she  says  evenly, 
as  if  that  covered  everything. 

The  same  goes  for  her  various  stepchil- 
dren. Palace  insiders  recall  that,  despite  the 
queen's  efforts  to  include  them  in  family  gath- 
erings, she  was  often  rebuffed  by  her  stepchil- 
dren, many  of  whom  didn't  like  her.  But  the 
queen  refuses  to  admit  to  any  such  problems. 
How  is  her  relationship  with  Abdullah,  her 
new  king?  "It's  very  close,"  she  says.  "We've 
spent  21  years  as  members  of  one  family. 
I've  watched  him  grow  ai.d  develop.  These 
days  we  talk  a  lot.  The  one  thing  I  desperately 

VANITY     FAIR 


want  to  ensure  is  that  he  is  never  burdened 
01  pressured  by  me  in  any  way." 

Most  Jordanians  still  believe  that  il  the 
king  had  had  more  time  he  would  have  ef- 
fected  the  necessary  changes  in  the  Jordan- 
ian constitution  to  make  Prince  Hamzah  his 
heir.  But  Queen  Noor  insists  that  the  ru- 
mors about  her  cutthroat  behind-the-scenes 
campaign  are  ridiculous.  "The  only  indica- 
tion I  ever  gave  to  my  husband  of  what  I 
thought  the  succession  would  be  is  what  he 
thought  was  right— and  that  I  would  support 
whomever  he  chose,  whatever  their  feelings 
about  me,"  she  says.  "My  husband  made  his 
feelings  about  our  son  very  clear  on  his  own; 
it  didn't  need  to  be  encouraged  or  promoted 
by  me.  The  irony  is  that  I  urged  my  husband 
to  give  Hamzah  a  chance  to  complete  his 
education,  and  to  have  some  time  free  of  the 
inevitable  pressures  that  would  have  been 
the  result  of  his  having  institutionalized  him 
in  a  position.  I  never  once  in  our  entire  mar- 
riage suggested  it."  She  pauses.  "No  one  will 
believe  this,"  she  adds  resignedly. 

As  for  how  things  turned  out,  she  takes 
a  determinedly  Panglossian  view.  "My  hus- 
band had  the  most  amazing  instincts,"  she 
says.  "I  just  knew  that  whatever  decision  he 
made  would  be  the  right  one,  and  whatever 
was  best  for  the  country  was  what  was 
needed.  Whenever  this  subject  reared  its 
head,  I  counseled  his  children,  my  children, 
his  nephews  and  cousins  to  simply  have 
faith;  it  would  be  as  God  willed." 

The  queen's  public  posture  is  always  thus: 
that  the  king  was  the  most  extraordinary  of 
men,  and  that  his  wisdom  was  so  exception- 
al he  was  virtually  always  correct.  "I  was  so 
lucky  to  love  and  be  loved  by  him,  and  that 
never  dies,"  she  says  softly.  "His  photograph 
is  beside  my  bed,  and  it  makes  me  smile.  I 
start  my  days  talking  to  him;  I  end  my  days 
talking  to  him.  His  spirit  is  still  guiding  me." 
She  isn't  certain  what  she  thinks  about  an 
afterlife,  but  she  has  a  strong  sense  of  the 
king's  presence:  "My  feeling  is  that  my  hus- 
band's spirit  is  an  enduring  one,  and  that  is 
an  enormous  comfort." 

Now  that  he  is  gone,  many  foreigners 
seem  to  assume  that  Queen  Noor  will 
adopt  a  more  international  lifestyle.  She  is 
rich,  beautiful,  and  relatively  young;  she 
moves  easily  between  East  and  West;  and 
one  can  readily  envision  her  new  life  as  a 
mixture  of  good  works  and  jet-set  glamour. 
Before  the  king  died,  she  had  already  taken 
on  Princess  Diana's  role  as  patron  of  the 
Landmine  Survivors  Network,  a  Washington- 
based  group  dedicated  to  the  eradication 
of  landmines  and  to  the  aid  of  their  many 
victims  around  the  world.  The  extent  of  the 
queen's  financial  resources  is  somewhat 
mysterious;  notably  resource-poor,  Jordan  is 
not  a  rich  country,  but  the  king  was  believed 
to  have  amassed  a  substantial  personal  for- 


! 

l 


tune.  "How  rich  was  he?  Nobody  knows  '' 
one  member  of  a  rich  Jordanian  clan  sa;  f  ' 
dryly. 

Although  the  queen  can  surely  live  ho^  W 
ever  she  pleases,  she  seems  startled  th  '■'' 
anyone  would  even  consider  that  she  migl  r 
distance  herself  from  Jordan.  "This  is  n  r 
home;  this  is  my  family,"  she  says  firml  F 
She  refers  constantly  to  "my  work,"  ar  * 
has  no  intention  of  cutting  back  on  h<  r 
commitment  to  public  service.  She  sees  h  N 
purpose  in  life  as  carrying  on  her  hu  : 
band's  legacy,  and  King  Abdullah  has  i  '■"'■ 
ready  named  her  head  of  the  new  Kir 
Hussein  Foundation,  which  will  support  Jo  ~~ 
danian  development  and  peace-related  <  ;iJ 
forts  in  the  Middle  East.  And  on  a  perso  ^ 
al  level,  she  honors  her  husband  by  tryii  F 
to  emulate  his  humanity. 

"The  word  'role  model'  isn't  adequa  Cl 
here,"  she  says.  "One  of  the  things  that  hj  F 
not  been  well  understood  about  my  hu  ' 
band  was  the  importance  of  his  religioi  f 
faith.  As  a  Hashemite,  as  a  descendant  <  i; 
the  prophet  Muhammad,  he  felt  a  huj  - 
burden  of  responsibility  to  be  exemplary  t !l 
his  life  and  his  relations,  and  it  was  one  <  kJ 
the  critical  lenses  through  which  he  looke 
at  everything  he  did.  He  never  lost  his  fail 
in  humanity;  he  never  put  up  barriers  th; 
would  have  prevented  him  from  lookir  If' 
for  the  best  in  people;  he  never  becan  p 

bitter Throughout  his  life,  in  spite  of  s  'ii! 

many  disappointments  and  so  many  cru  I' 
personal  and  political  deceptions,  he  sti  p 
maintained  his  faith  and  optimism  abot  It 
people." 

She  looks  down  at  her  hands,  which  ai  wt 
unadorned  except  for  her  own  and  her  hu  m 
band's  wedding  rings  on  one  hand  and,  c  m 
the  other,  a  ruby  ring  she  gave  him  for  h  N 
last  birthday.  "I'm  a  much  better  person  f<  p 
having  known  him,"  she  says.  "I  have  bee  11 
sustained  by  feeling  so  fortunate— more  tha  In 
feeling  deprived  or  bereft.  I  feel  my  life  wj  fti 
always  be  enriched  by  his  spirit." 

Bu: 

Over  the  course  of  his  long  reign,  Kir  I 
Hussein  survived  nearly  a  dozen  assa 
sination  attempts.  "His  enemies  strafed  h  h 
home,  shot  at  his  plane,  poisoned  his  foot  1 
even  put  acid  in  his  nose  drops,"  as  New  Mt 
week  put  it. 

"He  knew  every  day  of  his  life,  and  m 
knew  from  the  day  we  became  engaged,  th:  n 
every  moment  was  precious,  and  that  an  c  [ 
thing  could  happen  at  any  time,"  Quee  p 
Noor  says.  "From  that  moment,  I  woul  ■ 
have  been  willing  to  give  my  life  for  him.  W  n 
all  would,  because  he  represented  somethir  1 
so  much  bigger  than  what  we  represented  i  m 
our  own  lives." 

She  gazes  beyond  me  to  the  garden  outsic  m 
the  French  doors,  chilled  now  by  a  raw  win<  j  !i 
"I  had  imagined  we  could  have  had  anotht  m 
15  or  20  years  together,"  she  says  sadly.        11k 

JUNE     1  9  9    '■ 


Months  earlier,  on  a  brisk  autumn  after- 
on,  Queen  Noor  and  I  had  sat  on  the  ter- 
;e  of  her  house  in  a  Maryland  suburb, 
king  about  the  life  that  had  led  her  to  Jor- 
n.  Before  us  was  the  Potomac  River,  half 
iden  behind  trees  that  were  just  begin- 
lg  to  lose  their  leaves;  the  house  was  full 
handwoven  Jordanian  rugs  and  pillows, 
d  the  table  was  set  with  colorful  hand- 
inted  Jordanian  pottery. 
King  Hussein  had  just  been  summoned 
>m  the  Mayo  Clinic  to  Washington  to 
lp  broker  the  Wye  River  peace  accord 
tween  Israel's  Benjamin  Netanyahu  and 
lestinian  leader  Yasser  Arafat.  The  king 
d  queen  had  been  up 
I  night,  and  the  air 
ickled  with  tension  as 
2y  waited  for  the  call 
)m  the  White  House 
sorting  that  the  agree- 
2nt  was  ready  to  be 
;ned.  When  it  was,  lat- 
that  day,  King  Hus- 
in  would  be  credited 
th  having  played  a 
itical  role  as  mediator. 


er  cousin  he  wed  in  an  arranged  marriage 
when  he  was  19.  They  managed  to  produce 
one  daughter  before  divorcing.  The  king's 
second  wife  was  Toni  Gardiner,  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  British  military  officer.  A  middle- 
class  girl  who  had  gone  to  secretarial 
school,  the  moonfaced  Gardiner  was  given 
the  name  Princess  Muna— "the  king's  de- 
sire"—by  Hussein,  and  the  sobriquet  of 
"the  typist  from  Ipswich"  by  derisive  Jorda- 
nians. Princess  Muna  bore  the  king  four 
children,  including  Prince  Abdullah,  who 
shares  his  mother's  soft,  round  face.  But  11 
years  later,  the  king,  who  always  had  a  racy 
reputation  as  a  playboy,  divorced  her  to 


i  t  first  glance,  Queen 

\  Noor  seems  an  un- 

ely  wife  for  a  pint-size 

iddle  East  potentate. 

sr  father,  Najeeb  Hala- 

I  is  a  prominent  Syrian- 

tnerican  who  served  as 

:ad  of  Pan  American 

odd  Airways,  but  al- 

ough  the  former  Lisa 

alaby  has  always  em- 

tasized  her  Arab  blood,  in  truth  she  is  only 

le-quarter  Arab.  Her  Swedish-American 

other  was  pained  by  Queen  Noor's  repu- 

ation  of  her  Scandinavian  background. 

•Ay  mother  has  resented  terribly  that  I  find 

y  Arab  roots  much  more  interesting,"  the 

leen  says. 

But  to  the  young  Lisa,  Arabia  had  al- 
ays  represented  the  exotic,  the  unknown, 
id  after  earning  a  B.A.  in  architecture 
id  urban  planning  from  Princeton  in 
»74,  she  set  off  for  the  Middle  East.  She 
as  searching  for  her  heritage;  she  found 
;r  destiny. 

Until  she  came  along,  King  Hussein 
idn't  had  much  luck  with  his  wives.  He 
id  become  king  under  tragic  circum- 
ances.  When  Hussein  was  15,  his  grand- 
ther  King  Abdullah  was  assassinated  by 

Palestinian  nationalist  in  front  of  his 
/es;  Hussein  was  shot  as  well,  but  a 
edal  on  his  chest  deflected  the  bullet, 
is  father  then  became  king,  but  was  soon 
reed  to  abdicate  because  of  schizophre- 
a.  Hussein  was  only  16  when  he  ascend- 
i  the  throne. 

His  first  wife,  Princess  Dina,  was  an  old- 


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LOYAL  FAMILY 

The  Jordanian  royal  family, 
Nadwa  Palace,  Amman,  1993.  Queen 

Noor  and  King  Hussein 
are  in  the  center,  with  their  children- 
Prince  Hamzah  (now  the  crown 
prince)  is  to  the  left  of  Noor; 
Prince  Hashim  is  directly  behind  them; 

the  young  Princesses  Iman 
and  Raiyah  sit  one  row  down  and  are 

dressed  alike.  The  current  king, 

Abdullah,  is  on  the  far  right,  one  row 

from  the  front. 


marry  a  24-year-old  Palestinian  beauty  who 
was  the  first  of  his  wives  to  be  awarded  the 
title  of  queen.  Queen  Alia  had  two  children 
and  adopted  a  baby  whose  mother  had 
been  killed  in  a  plane  crash,  but  she  herself 
died  in  a  helicopter  crash  only  five  years 
into  their  marriage,  plunging  the  king  into 
deep  depression. 

Little  more  than  a  year  later,  Lisa  Hala- 
by  appeared  on  the  scene.  After  a  whirl- 
wind courtship  that  amazed  both  of  them, 
she  and  the  king  got  married  in  1978.  "She 
was  totally  in  love  with  him,"  says  her  sis- 
ter, Alexa  Halaby,  a  lawyer  and  clinical  so- 


cial worker  who  lives  in  Washington,  D.C. 
"It  was  clear  how  much  he  adored  her. 
They  just  both  viewed  it  as  fate." 

In  marrying  Hussein,  the  spirited,  opin- 
ionated American  gave  up  an  extraordi- 
nary amount:  her  name,  her  religion,  her 
country,  her  future  as  an  independent  wom- 
an. As  her  former  classmate  Marion  Free- 
man puts  it,  she  even  gave  up  "the  freedom 
to  be  able  to  have  a  bad  hair  day." 

But  to  hear  Queen  Noor  tell  the  story, 
none  of  these  were  sacrifices.  First  the  king 
changed  his  bride's  name  to  Noor  al-Hus- 
sein— "the  light  of  Hussein."  The  meaning  of 
her  name  "was  a  gen- 
erous gift  from  him," 
she  says.  Nor  did  she 
mourn  the  loss  of  her 
original  identity:  "I  was 
never  comfortable  with 
the  name  Lisa.  I  never 
felt  it  was  me." 

She  didn't  even  find 
it  wrenching  to  con- 
vert; although  her  sis- 
ter describes  the  family 
as  "nominally  Episco- 
palian," Queen  Noor 
says,  "I  couldn't  ac- 
cept the  dogmatic  side 
of  Christianity." 

Islam  means  submis- 
sion to  the  will  of  God, 
and  the  queen  became 
adept  at  the  art  of  sub- 
mitting: to  Islam;  to  her 
husband,  the  king;  to 
the  excruciatingly  re- 
strictive role  of  an  Islamic  queen;  to  the  of- 
ten archaic  expectations  of  the  Jordanian 
people.  Jordan  is,  after  all,  a  country  where 
men  still  practice  so-called  "crimes  of  hon- 
or": even  if  a  woman  is  raped,  let  alone  if 
she  gets  pregnant  out  of  wedlock,  her  father 
or  brother  may  kill  her,  believing  that  she 
has  disgraced  the  family  and  that  its  honor 
can  be  restored  only  by  slaughtering  her. 
The  queen  has  spoken  out  against  "honor" 
killings,  but  in  general  her  demeanor  is  fine- 
ly attuned  to  suggest  humility  and  submis- 
sion to  local  norms,  and  she  frequently  ends 
her  sentences  with  the  Arabic  expression  in- 
shallah,  which  means  "God  willing."  When 
Noor  became  a  Muslim,  says  Marion  Free- 
man, "I  think  she  really  gave  up  the  West- 
ern idea  of  being  in  control.  She  accepted 
the  Arab  way  of  looking  at  things;  there  is  a 
sense  of  fatalism,  a  sense  that  things  hap- 
pen in  life  because  it  is  the  hand  of  Allah." 
However,  sometimes  the  queen's  acqui- 
escence is  more  apparent  than  real.  After 
her  husband's  death,  the  press  made  much 
of  the  fact  that  the  queen  had  not  been 
able  to  attend  his  funeral  because  Islamic 
tradition  excludes  females  from  such  occa- 


J  N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Queen  \<>or 


sions  1  in  -  sin.  now  confesses,  is  not  true. 
I  atti  tided  the  funeral,"  she  says  quietly.  "I 
watch  ■  i  ny  husband  laid  to  rest  but  I  was 
qo1  in  the  group  of  men.  I  was  a  few  me- 
ters away,  I  did  it  out  of  sight.  The  custom 
that  women  do  not  attend,  but  I 
did.  It  was  important  to  me  to  go  through 
the  entire  process." 

\s  a  grieving  widow,  she  is  also  mixing 
the  traditional  Western  black  with  white, 
the  Islamic  color  of  mourning.  "My  hus- 
band hated  mourning  black  with  a  pas- 
sion, so  I've  tried  to  break  it  up  and  strike 
a  balance— which  is  the  way  we  lived  our 
lives,  striking  a  balance  for  our  own  prin- 
ciples while  at  the  same  time  not  being  in- 
sensitive," she  says. 

Queen  Noor  has  become  a  master  at 
such  exquisite  calibrations.  Her  hus- 
oand  provided  an  eloquent  example  in  the 
way  he  handled  his  own  responsibilities; 
he  had  long  walked  a  slender  tightrope, 
buffeted  by  the  warring  rivalries  of  Israel, 
Syria,  Egypt,  and  Iraq,  with  American 
and  British  interests  to  placate  as  well.  As 
U.S.  State  Department  analysts  used  to 
say,  "Hussein  doesn't  sit  on  the  fence— he 
is  the  fence."  But  by  all  accounts,  the  king 
didn't  tell  Noor  how  to  be  queen;  he  sim- 
ply let  her  figure  it  out  on  her  own.  "He 
kind  of  threw  me  in  the  deep  end,"  she 
says.  "There  is  no  official  role  for  a  queen 
in  this  country.  It's  whatever  you  as  an  in- 
dividual choose  to  make  of  it." 

Developing  a  public  persona  was  particu- 
larly painful;  Queen  Noor  had  always  been 
"pathologically  shy,"  she  says,  and  she  was 
petrified  of  failure.  "I  always  placed  an  in- 
credible pressure  on  myself,  because  of  feel- 
ing I  had  to  be  perfect  in  order  not  to  let 
my  husband  down  and  not  to  let  the  coun- 
try down."  Realizing  what  a  constructive 
role  she  could  play  as  a  bridge  between  East 
and  West— one  that  became  critically  im- 
portant when  U.S.-Jordanian  relations  were 
strained  to  the  breaking  point  during  the 
Gulf  War— she  started  to  give  speeches  in 
America  and  abroad.  "I  was  terrified  of 
making  a  mistake  that  might  cause  prob- 
lems for  my  husband  or  for  Jordan,"  she 
says.  "Every  time  I  got  up  to  speak,  I  felt  I 
had  the  weight  of  the  Arab  side  of  the 
whole  Arab-Israeli  conflict  on  my  shoulders. 
Which,  of  course,  is  not  true;  I  magnified  it 
out  of  proportion,  I'm  sure.  But  one  little 
error  could  have  blown  up  and  caused  the 
wrong  problem  at  the  wrong  time." 

The  role  Queen  Noor  evolved  for  herself 
has  been  as  exemplary  as  it  was  un- 
precedented. She  has  pioneered  a  wide  range 
of  development  efforts  aimed  at  women's 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


economic  empowerment  and  the  preser- 
vation of  Jordanian  handicrafts  by  funding 

pilot  projects  and  promoting  native  prod- 
ucts that  range  from  hand-painted  ceram- 
ics to  Bedouin  rugs.  Her  Noor  Al  Hussein 
Foundation,  the  umbrella  organization  she 
established  for  her  varied  concerns,  has 
supported  community-development,  child- 
welfare,  education,  and  cultural-heritage 
initiatives,  including  the  creation  of  the  an- 
nual Jerash  Festival  for  Culture  and  Arts, 
which  has  become  a  major  event  in  the 
Arab  world. 

But  no  matter  how  worthy  her  causes. 
Queen  Noor  has  always  been  the  target  of 
nasty  gossip,  particularly  among  what  Am- 
man society  sardonically  refers  to  as  "the 
chattering  class."  "The  king  is  the  center  of 
power,  and  there's  jealousy:  'Why  should  she 
be  his  wife?  Why  shouldn't  my  daughter  be 
his  wife?  She  shouldn't  be  off  doing  all 
these  things!  She  should  stay  home  and 
take  care  of  the  kids!'"  says  one  Jordanian 
journalist  in  trying  to  explain  some  of  the 
animosity. 

A  wealthy  Jordanian  wife  says,  "Espe- 
cially in  the  upper  class  here,  women  don't 
work.  Maybe  she  made  women  feel  inse- 
cure because  they're  not  as  effective.  The 
feeling  was  'She's  not  one  of  us.'" 

The  gossip  tended  to  focus  on  trivialities. 
"They  started  talking  about  her  shopping," 
says  Mohammad  Al-Adwan,  who  has  served 
in  many  high  government  posts.  "People 
were  really  unfair  to  her;  they  made  her 
sound  like  Imelda  Marcos.  She  dresses 
nicely,  but  most  of  the  time  here  she  wears 
Jordanian  clothes  that  don't  cost  much. 
She  and  His  Majesty  lived  more  simply 
than  many  Jordanians." 

The  political  context  of  a  repressive 
monarchy  also  played  a  role.  "They  criti- 
cize the  queen  because  they  don't  dare 
criticize  the  king;  it's  against  the  law— you 
can  go  to  jail.  So  it's  a  way  of  criticizing 
the  king,"  explains  an  influential  Jordanian. 

The  queen  has  cultivated  a  philosophi- 
cal attitude  toward  the  slings  and  arrows: 
"A  lot  of  it  was  based  on  some  delusions 
about  what  a  great  life  this  is.  I  used  to 
say  to  my  husband,  'You  wouldn't  wish 
this  job  on  your  worst  enemy— unless  they 
were  the  right  person  for  it.'"  But,  as  usual, 
she  simply  soldiered  on:  "I  constantly  re- 
minded myself  that,  if  my  husband  could 
get  through  what  he  had  to  get  through, 
I  could  get  through  what  I  had  to  get 
through— and  that  it  wasn't  personal." 

In  truth,  sometimes  it  was  all  too  per- 
sonal; particularly  hurtful  were  the  inter- 
mittent rumors  about  the  king's  womaniz- 
ing. Here  again  the  queen  found  denial  to 
be  useful.  "She  ascribed  most  of  whatever 
was  in  the  media  to  malicious  rumor,"  says 
Marion  Freeman.  "She  trained  herself  not 
to  give  it  any  credence." 


Even  without  outside  criticism  as  a  pro(| 
Queen  Noor  holds  herself  to  notorious] 
high  standards.  "I'm  unbearable  to  my  staff, 
she  says  with  a  smile.  Before  she  delivers 
speech,  she  will  agonize  over  every  wore 
"She's  a  perfectionist,"  says  Marwan  Muasl 
er,  the  Jordanian  ambassador  to  the  Unite 
States.  "She  would  go  through  15  or  2 
drafts  of  a  speech;  she  wanted  to  make  sui 
every  sentence  was  right.  She's  a  very  artici 
late  speaker,  she  has  served  very  effectivel 
as  a  spokesperson  for  Jordan,  and  she  hi 
become  well  known  internationally  in  h( 
own  right,  not  just  as  the  wife  of  the  king 

Oddly,  one  topic  Queen  Noor  can't  seei 
to  address  is  the  moral  implications  ( 
marrying  a  king  in  the  first  place.  I  am  ci 
rious  about  how  an  American  raised  in 
democratic  society  justifies  becoming  pa! 
of  a  political  system  in  which  someone  c<\ 
be  jailed  for  "slandering"  the  monarcl 
Having  grown  up  in  the  United  States  du 
ing  the  60s  and  70s,  Queen  Noor  likes  t 
describe  herself  as  a  veteran  of  the  civi 
rights  movement.  But  no  matter  how  hard 
try  to  get  her  to  explain  her  personal  ratk 
nale  for  becoming  a  queen,  she  continuou 
ly  deflects  the  conversation  into  the  kind  ( 
the-natives-weren't-ready-for-democrac 
colonialist  apologia  perfected  by  the  Britis 
in  Africa. 

Amazingly,  given  the  transformation  sh  U 
has  wrought  upon  herself  since  becomin 
queen,  Noor  insists  that  she  hasn't  change* 
a  bit.  "I'm  the  same  person  I've  alway   . 
been,"  she  protests  with  an  utterly  straigl 
face. 

Even  to  a  casual  observer,  this  is  man 
festly  untrue.  "She  is  unrecognizable  t 
someone  who  knew  her  in  her  previo 
life,"  says  one  American  woman  who  me 
Lisa  Halaby  as  a  college  student,  when  sh 
took  a  leave  from  Princeton  to  ski  at  Ai 
pen.  "Some  people  really  reinvent  then 
selves,  and  you  have  a  very  strong  sense  c  r  i 
that  with  her,"  says  a  New  Yorker  who  ha 
known  Queen  Noor  over  the  years.  Th 
biggest  change  is  the  loss  of  spontaneit 
demanded  by  a  public  life  that  requin 
Queen  Noor  to  think  carefully  about  ever 
word  she  says  and  every  move  she  make; 
The  habit  of  deliberation  has  become  s 
ingrained  that  it  affects  even  her  most  int 
mate  friendships. 

"She's  a  very  different  person  now,"  a< 
knowledges  Marion  Freeman.  "She's  mor 
formal  with  me.  She  has  lived  that  role  fc1 
so  long  that  the  role  has  become  her,  i: 
many  ways." 

Queen  Noor  never  goes  anywhere  alon( 
even  when  she  drives  herself  in  her  Met 
cedes  jeep  she  is  accompanied  by  a  can 
van  of  armed  guards.  There  are  alway 
watchful  eyes  upon  her.  Privacy  is  a  scare 
commodity  in  such  a  life. 

JUNE      199 


The  most  the  queen  will  admit  is  that, 

lind  closed  doors,  her  public  posture  of 
quiescence  did  not  always  reflect  the  pri- 
e  reality.  A  mischievous  sparkle  lights  her 
ks  as  she  tells  me  that  once,  years  ago, 
lg  Hussein  forgot  a  very  important  date— 
•  birthday  or  their  anniversary,  she  thinks. 

he  was  leaving  the  room,  still  oblivious 
riis  transgression.  "I  picked  up  something 
oped  would  smash  and  threw  it  at  a  clos- 

door,"  she  says,  suppressing  a  grin. 
But  such  lapses  were  rare;  even  with  her 
sband.  Queen  Noor  ex- 
;d  a  steely  self-control. 
3r  both  of  us,  it  wasn't 
r  nature  to  share  our 
»blems,"  she  says.  "Both 
us  grew  up  having  to 
;ome  very  emotionally 
lependent  from  a  very 
ly  age,  having  to  look 
;r  ourselves  in  compli- 
ed family  environments, 
e  fact  that  we  grew  to- 
her  year  after  year  is, 
hink,  the  reason  we 
ne  out  of  each  dif- 
jlt  time  even  stronger. 
:11  in  love  with  my  hus- 
ld  over  20  years,  more 
d  more."  By  the  end, 
i  queen  and  the  king 
:med  to  find  their  mir- 

image  in  each  other, 
think  we  would  look 
ide  and  find  the  other 
2  of  us,"  she  says  softly. 
But  while  Queen  Noor 
lis  the  king  her  best 
:nd,  she  didn't  even  let 
n  see  the  whole  truth, 
told  him  as  little  as 
ssible  of  anything  that 
ght  disturb  him,"  she 
I,  "He  needed  me  to 
Ip  alleviate  the  crip- 
ng  burdens  he  had  to 
ir,  not  to  add  my  feel- 
is  of  frustration  or  hurt  or  not  knowing 
at  to  do.  I  tried  to  be  as  much  support 
him  as  possible,  and  I  tried  to  deal  with 
rthing  that  concerned  me  on  my  own." 
That  sounds  pretty  lonely.  "Yes,  of  course 
was  lonely  at  times,"  Queen  Noor  says 
etly.  "It  is  lonely  at  times." 

F  ing  Hussein  was  well  aware  of  her  self- 
k.sacrifice:  the  queen  "endured  much 
tiety  and  many  shocks,  but  always  placed 
•  faith  in  God  and  hid  her  tears  behind 
iles,"  he  wrote  in  his  last  letter  to 
nee  Hassan. 

At  the  end  of  the  king's  life,  many  Jorda- 
ns  finally  realized  how  formidable  his 
e  was.  "She  never  let  her  guard  down," 
s  Ambassador  Muasher,  who  was  with 


the  royal  family  at  the  hospital.  "She  would 
never  break  down  and  cry  in  front  of  us; 
she  would  never  act  in  any  way  to  suggest 
weakness.  She  kept  our  spirits  up.  She's  a 
strong  woman.  I  never  knew  how  strong 
until  now."  " 

Years  ago  Najeeb  Halaby  said  that  his 
daughter  had  a  hard  time  adjusting  to  her 
new  life  in  Jordan,  but  that  she  had  "hid- 
den some  of  the  difficulties  of  the  chal- 
lenge," coping  with  them  by  herself.  Since 
she  is  close  to  her  sister  as  well  as  friends 


tration  during  the  Kennedy  years,  and  in 
California  when  he  worked  in  the  aerospace 
industry.  By  the  time  she  graduated  from 
college,  the  Halabys  were  divorcing. 

"My  parents  struggled  with  the  social 
and  economic  pressures  of  moving  back 
and  forth  between  public  and  private  life, 
and  the  dislocations  of  moving  between 
the  East  Coast  and  the  West  Coast,"  Queen 
Noor  says.  It  doesn't  sound  as  if  any  place 
was  truly  home,  or  left  her  with  a  feeling 
that  she  had  genuine  roots.  "We  did  not 
grow  up  anywhere,"  she 
says  flatly.  She  describes 
herself  as  a  "difficult, 
withdrawn  adolescent," 
adding,  "I  was  very  much 
of  a  loner.  I  just  kind  of 
found  my  own  way,  in- 
dependently. I  relied  on 
myself  as  much  as  possi- 
ble. We  didn't  grow  up 
cozy-cozy.  I  don't  know 
what  a  close  family  is.  I 
only  had  my  family,  and 
then  I've  had  my  children, 
and  our  family  isn't  nor- 
mal, either." 


A; 


THE  KING  IN  WINTER 

King  Hussein  photographed  in 

his  47th  year  as  monarch 

of  Jordan,  at  his  estate  in  Maryland, 

on  January  5,  1999. 


who  go  back  to  her  school  days,  I  ask  if 
she  confided  in  them.  She  shrugs.  "They 
couldn't  understand,"  she  says  with  a  dis- 
missive wave  of  her  hand. 

The  eldest  of  three  children  whose  par- 
ents' marriage  had  long  been  troubled,  Lisa 
learned  early  to  fend  for  herself  emotionally. 
The  Halabys— whom  she  has  described  as 
your  typical  "moderately  dysfunctional"  late- 
20th-century  family— moved  around,  living 
in  New  York,  in  Washington  when  her  father 
was  head  of  the  Federal  Aviation  Adminis- 


s  a  mother,  Queen 
Noor  has  earned  high 
praise  from  the  Jordan- 
ian people,  who  appreci- 
ate the  fact  that  she  raised 
her  children  to  be  fluent 
in  Arabic  (unlike  King 
Abdullah,  whose  British 
mother  didn't  stress  that 
part  of  his  education). 
"Her  children  are  warm 
and  extremely  down-to- 
earth,"  says  Ambassador 
Muasher.  "They  are  not 
remote  or  detached  from 
the  people  at  all." 

But  the  queen  ac- 
knowledges that  her  first 
priority  was  always  her 
husband.  Last  fall  she  told  me.  "We  are 
pulled  in  many  directions,  and  we're  not  al- 
ways present,  so  we  have  to  rely  on  the  ex- 
tended family  for  primary  care  for  our  chil- 
dren. We  try  to  draw  them  into  our  lives 
and  concerns  as  much  as  possible,  so  they 
can  understand  what's  pulling  us  away,  but 
there's  no  question  that  my  primary  re- 
sponsibility has  always  had  to  be  with  my 
husband— by  my  choice,  not  his.  In  that 
way,  I  felt  I  was  serving  not  only  my  chil- 
dren and  their  future,  but  our  country. 
There  are  times  when  I  wonder  whether  I 
served  my  children  well  enough  in  the 
choice  I  made,  but  only  time  will  tell." 

Now  that  their  father  is  dead,  she  insists 
that  the  children  are  free  to  make  their  own 
choices  in  life    but  their  home  is  clear.     I 


^  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Q 


IK'CII    \ooi 


\. 


ii  one  ol  my  children  wanted 

i  toi   "i   ..n    irchitect.  My  girls 

tvou     i   ■  to  b(  vets.  But  their  lives  are  in 

•  I  to  Jordan,"  she  says.  "They 

aselves  as  Jordanians;  their  future  is 

in  Jordan;  they  sec  then  responsibilities  as 

being  to  Jordan." 

All  In  >ugh  Hamzah  is  now  the  crown 
prince.  King  Abdullah  could  easily  make 
his  own  son  who  is  lour  the  heir  as  soon 
as  he's  old  enough.  ""People  are  saying  that 
Abdullah  is  a  transitional  king,  and  that  af- 
ter a  certain  number  of  years  Hamzah 
takes  over  but  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
transitional  king,"  one  government  insider 
says.  "The  king  calls  the  shots— period." 

Would  Queen  Noor  be  disappointed  if 
her  son  never  became  king?  '"I  haven't  even 
thought  about  it,"  she  says.  "Whatever  is  in 
the  country's  best  interest." 

The  country's  best  interest  will  dictate  her 


Own  ciuiise  as  well.  "The  dutiful  aspect  ol 
my  lite,  foi  the  most  part,  was  of  my  own 
choosing  not  because  of  my  marriage,  but 
because  Of  my  nature,"  she  says.  "My  mar- 
riage simply  handed  me  a  certain  framework 
lor  duties.  But  the  way  I've  gone  about  try- 
ing to  fulfill  the  responsibilities  1  took  upon 
myself  was  motivated  by  my  own  personal 
sense  of  duty,  not  by  a  queenly  sense  of 
duty.  I  felt  all  my  life  that  those  of  us  who 
had  been  privileged  with  a  great  education, 
with  security  and  stability  at  home,  had  a  re- 
sponsibility to  give  what  we  could  to  make 
that  possible  for  everyone." 

She  smiles  wanly.  "All  I've  been  trying 
to  do  is  lead  a  meaningful  life  and  deserve 
my  place  on  earth." 

By  now  an  evening  chill  has  stolen  into 
the  air;  the  sky  is  darkening.  As  Queen 
Noor  walks  me  out  to  my  car,  I  tell  her  again 
how  sorry  I  am  for  her  loss.  Her  eyes  unex- 
pectedly well  with  tears.  "I  find  it  so  much 
easier  to  comfort  others  than  to  be  com- 


:•'■ 


Ibrted  myself,"  she  murmurs,  embarrass 
For  a  moment  we  stand  on  the  lawn, 
tening  to  the  fountains  splash  and  bi 
twitter  in  the  tall  pine  trees.  Surrounding 
are  jasmine-scented  gardens  and  magno 
whose  blossoms  the  queen  took  to  lay  on 
husband's  grave.  The  palace  compounc 
lovely,  but  it  is  also  an  armed  camp  hide 
behind  locked  gates  and  high  walls,  as  i 
cumscribed  as  the  life  of  an  Islamic  quee 
My  driver  is  a  member  of  the  Royal 
lice,  so  we  will  pass  easily  through  the  n 
tary  checkpoints,  each  manned  by  oli 
drab-clad  soldiers,  that  line  the  road  to  E 
Al  Salam,  which  means  "'the  Door 
Peace."  Queen  Noor  will  stay.  The  trutl 
that  Jordan  is  the  only  home  she  has  e 
really  known,  and  the  thought  of  leavinj 
is  as  inconceivable  to  her  as  the  thouj 
that  her  life  might  have  been  otherwise. 
She  has  no  regrets.  "If  I  had  it  all  to 
over,  I  wouldn't  do  anything  differently," 
says.  Shivering,  she  turns  and  walks  slo 
back  into  the  palace,  alone.  □ 


Julia  Roberts 


continued  from  PAot  i7i  The  Day  of  the 
Locust;  news  footage  of  this  period  shows 
a  lovely  young  woman  glowing  amid  the 
flashbulbs,  patiently  tilting  her  head  for 
each  camera— the  way  a  cat  tilts  when  you 
ask  it  a  question.  Sometimes,  before  a  pre- 
miere, she  would  salivate  with  anticipation. 

The  honeymoon  was  brief,  however,  and 
by  summer  the  hordes  had  descended. 
There  were  two  reasons  for  this,  and  the  first 
was  inevitable  in  the  way  that  all  Hollywood 
crucibles  are  inevitable.  "'It  was  my  turn," 
Roberts  says.  "I  didn't  check  the  schedule, 
but  I  guess  it  was  my  turn."  Which  is  to  say 
that,  after  a  rise  to  stardom  invariably  de- 
scribed as  ""meteoric,"  it  was  time  for  Act  II: 
The  Backlash.  Suddenly,  Herbert  Ross,  who 
had  directed  Roberts  in  her  fifth  film,  Steel 
Magnolias,  was  crankily  suggesting  that  his 
young  charge  needed  acting  lessons.  During 
the  filming  of  Steven  Spielberg's  disastrous 
1991  Peter  Pan  story,  Hook,  in  which  Roberts 
was  cast  as  Tinkerbell,  there  were  rumblings 
that  she  had  been,  to  use  that  quintessential 
Hollywood  euphemism,  "difficult."  Like  any 
true  public  humiliation,  Roberts's  was  sealed 
on  60  Minutes,  when  Spielberg  cagily  said, 
"It  was  an  unfortunate  time  for  us  to  work 
together."  And  "Tinkerhell"  was  born. 

Say  this  about  Roberts:  she  has  rarely 
bad-mouthed  a  colleague  in  public,  never 
displayed  her  obvious  first-strike  capability, 
never  named  names.  But  she's  no  shrinking 
violet;  kick  her  at  your  peril.  ("It's  funny 
when  people  say,  'I  don't  think  Julia  likes 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


me.'  Honey,  if  I  don't  like  you,  you're  gonna 
know  it.")  Roberts  gushes  about  her  Steel 
Magnolias  co-stars  Sally  Field  and  Shirley 
MacLaine,  but  conspicuously  avoids  men- 
tioning Herb  Ross:  "They  all  rallied  around 
me.  They  were  really  my  greatest  support- 
pretty  much  my  only  support." 

Asked  about  the  fallout  from  Hook,  Rob- 
erts flushes;  she  holds  up  her  hand,  as  if  in 
court.  "Hand  to  God:  not  a  thing  I  read 
about  that  was  truthful,  and  it  really  hurt 
my  feelings.  Because  not  only  did  it  make 
me  sound  mean,  but  it  was  a  situation 
where  people  who  knew  the  truth  talked 
about  it  in  a  way  that  wasn't  untruthful," 
she  says,  apparently  referring  to  the  Spiel- 
berg interview.  "I  saw  that  and  my  eyes 
popped  out  of  my  head.  I  couldn't  believe 
it.  I  couldn't  believe  that  this  person  that  I 
knew  and  trusted  was  actually  hesitating  to 
come  to  my  defense."  She  adds,  "It  was  a 
hard  lesson  to  learn.  It  was  the  first  time 
that  I  felt  I  had  a  turncoat  in  my  midst." 


M: 


"eanwhile,  there  was  another  delicious 
.  carrot  dangled  in  front  of  the  tabloids 
in  1991— a  period  that  Roberts's  agent, 
Elaine  Goldsmith-Thomas,  called  "The  Fel- 
lini  Summer."  It  may  not  have  been  Bill 
and  Monica,  but  the  events  of  that  long, 
hot  season  still  have  a  singular  heft  in  terms 
of  sheer,  salacious  New  York  Post~mss.  Rob- 
erts was  engaged  to  Kiefer  Sutherland, 
whom  she  then  dumped  three  days  before 
the  big  event  (scheduled  to  take  place  on  a 
studio  back  lot,  Liz-and-Larry-style,  with  a 
Steel  Magnolias  theme)  because  of  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  enormously  buxom 
Amanda  Rice— or  just  plain  of  "Raven,"  as 


she  was  known  over  at  L.A.'s  Crazy  Gi 
Live  Exotic  Strip  Show.  Ashen  and  sunki 
eyed,  Roberts  flew  off  to  Ireland  with  Su 
erland's  best  friend  (well,  ex-best  frien 
Jason  Patric,  only  to  dump  him  too. 

The  awful  truth  was  out:  Julia  Robe 
had  a  weakness  for  leading  men,  particul 
ly  her  own  leading  men,  including  Li; 
Neeson  (Satisfaction),  Dylan  McDerm 
(Steel  Magnolias),  and  Sutherland  (Flat! 
ers).  The  story  unfolded  for  three  yea 
consuming  Daniel  Day-Lewis,  Ethan  Hawl 
and  Matthew  Perry  of  Friends,  and  w 
highlighted  by  Roberts's  unlikely,  short-liv 
1993  marriage  to  the  country  musician  L 
Lovett,  whose  arrival  reinvigorated  the  fi 
ternity  of  bad  headline  writers  (love 

FIRST  SIGHT,  LOVETT  OR  LEAVE  IT). 

Within  months,  Miss  America  had  n 
tated  into  the  mainstream  media's  favor 
pifiata,  thrashed  by  nontabloid  publicatio 
such  as  Newsweek,  which  fanned  "report 
from  the  British  tabloids;  People,  which  r 
a  sidebar  comparing  her  box-office  gross 
with  those  of  Kiefer  Sutherland;  Redboc 
which  offered  odds  on  which  star  Robei 
would  date  next  (the  favorite,  at  1-1,  w 
Gere);  and  Spy,  which  suggested  a  link  t 
tween  her  love  life  and  international  dis< 
ters  such  as  the  Iraqi  invasion  of  Kuwa 
She  was  23  years  old. 

"I  don't  think  I  realized  that  the  cost 
fame  is  that  it's  open  season  on  every  rr 
ment  of  your  life,"  Roberts  says  weari 
"That  was  a  time  when  I  was  kind  of  fi 
lowed  every  moment. . . .  One  time  I  st 
three  men  jump  out  of  a  hedge."  Her  pu 
Heists  assumed  a  bunker  mentality,  ai 
Roberts  began  snapping  at  the  tabloid  jac 

JUNE      191 


"You  must  be  so  proud!"  she'd  say. 
'hen  your  son  says,  'Dad,  what  do  you 
T  you  say,  i  jump  out  of  bushes  and  ter- 
ize  women  in  the  night!"'  After  reading 
■oris  alleging  that  she'd  had  a  wild  night 
dancing  and  romance  with  Hawke,  she 
led  a  memorable  denial:  "I  love  to  dance, 
i  I  will  continue  to  dance.  In  fact,  I  plan 
doing  as  much  dancing,  with  as  many 
jple,  as  possible.  I  will  dance  until  I  drop, 
■w  about  that?" 

Then,  silence.  Roberts  didn't  film  any- 
ng  for  nearly  a  year.  The  "entertainment 
ss,"  which  abhors  a  vacuum,  launched  a 
.ilia  of  idiotic  stories,  one  suggesting  that 
berts  had  become  a  kind  of  Hollywood 
ig  girl,"  another  intimating  that  she  had 
;n  last  seen  at  the  Los  Angeles  Farmer's 
irket,  spiking  her  orange  juice  from  a 
>k.  "They  said  I  was  drug-addicted,  alco- 
lic,  anorexic— you  name  it,"  recalls  Rob- 
s,  who  says  she  was  merely  taking  it  easy 
j  waiting  for  the  right  scripts  to  come  in. 
mean,  they  needed  to  say  something  in 
:ween  the  'She's  Through!'  period  and 
•  'She's  Back!'  period." 
To  wit:  in  1992  she  was  attached  as  the 
aale  lead  in  a  project  called  Shakespeare 
Love,  which  was  to  be  directed  by  Ed- 
rd  Zwick,  the  bearded  co-creator  of  the 
^vision  series  thirtysomething.  Among  the 
itish  actors  who  auditioned  for  the  male 
d  were  Hugh  Grant  and  Rupert  Everett, 
.o  would  later  become  her  celebrated  co- 
rs  and  friends.  "I  was  a  very,  very  unem- 
>yed,  pathetic  actor  at  the  time,"  Grant 
:alls.  "I  remember  being  so  intimidated 
the  fact  that  she  was  in  the  room  that  I 
t  myself  in  a  sort  of  kerfuffle"— a  kind  of 
;ford  man's  canoodle— "and  missed  the 
air  when  I  sat  down.  I  sat  on  the  arm  of 
:  chair,  then  had  that  very  awkward  inner 
bate  about  whether  to  say,  'Actually,  I've 
ssed  the  chair,'  or  to  pretend  that  I  was 
illy  a  slightly  quirky  sort  of  character  who 
vays  sits  on  the  arm." 
Days  before  filming  was  set  to  begin, 
wever,  her  co-star  Daniel  Day-Lewis 
lied  out  of  the  project  to  do  another  film, 
d  eventually  all  the  major  players  (with  the 
:eption  of  Zwick,  who  remained  as  a  pro- 
cer)  moved  on,  ultimately  to  be  replaced 
Gwyneth  Paltrow,  Joseph  Fiennes,  direc- 
John  Madden,  and  seven  Oscars,  includ- 
;  Paltrow's,  for  best  actress.  "It's  just  some- 
ng  that  didn't  come  to  pass,  and  it  is  kind 
funny  looking  at  it  now,"  Roberts  says, 
ding  that  she  feels  no  pangs  of  regret. 
he  script  that  I  had  in  my  hot  little  hands 
the  time,  seemingly,  was  different." 

"^he  next  few  years  produced  a  grab  bag 
of  mild  successes,  including  the  John 
isham  thriller  The  Pelican  Brief  (1993), 
d  embarrassing  mistakes,  including  the 
'less  Howard  Hawks  rip-off  /  Love  Trou- 


ble (1994)  and  the  dreary  Jekyll-and-Hyde 
fiasco  Mary  Rally  ( 1996).  Roberts  is  the 
first  to  agree  that  the  last  two  films  "failed," 
but  discounts  reports  that  she  and  her  / 
Love  Trouble  co-star,  the  irascible  Nick 
Nolte,  quarreled  so  bitterly  that  they  some- 
times performed  in  front  of  stand-ins.  "I 
don't  know  what  I've  already  said  about  / 
Love  Trouble,  other  than  that  it  was  a  piece 
of  shit,"  she  says.  "It's  no  secret  that  Nick 
and  I  didn't  get  along  like  a  house  on  fire." 
Meantime,  things  had  slowed  to  a  trickle 
on  the  prurient  front,  which  perhaps  is  why 
the  tabloids  began  scrounging  for  table 
scraps— Larry  Flynt  offering  Roberts  $  1  mil- 
lion to  bare  all  in  Hustler,  anonymous,  third- 
hand  stories  that  she  had  tried  to  swipe 
Brad  from  Gwyneth  (notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  Roberts  had  never  actually  met 
Brad).  Then,  naturally,  the  floodgates  clanged 
open  again  amid  reports  that  she  had 
mounted  the  bar  at  Hogs  &  Heifers,  a  rau- 
cous nightspot  in  Manhattan's  meatpacking 
district,  and,  according  to  local  tradition, 
shed  her  Maidenform  34B  while  dancing 
madly  to  the  redneck  anthem  "The  Devil 
Went  Down  to  Georgia."  The  episode 
prompted  a  flurry  of  reports,  addenda,  clar- 
ifications, and  counterclarifications  regard- 
ing whether  the  star  and  the  bartender, 
Margaret  Emery,  had  . . .  well,  let's  let  the 
experts  explain  it: 

Photographer  Gary  Miller  said,  "There 
was  one  big,  long  tongue-to-tongue  kiss  that 
lasted  between  30  and  50  seconds." 

—New  York  Post, 
September  9,  1996. 

"Julia  Roberts  did  not  kiss  me,"  insists 
Margaret  Emery.  "Tluit's  a  long  time  for  a 
first  kiss.  I  don't  know  whether  I  could  even 
do  that  with  a  guy." 

—New  York  Daily  News, 
September  10,  1996. 

Tlxe  New  York  Post  yanked  an  item  from 
Liz  Smith's  column  that  pooh-poohed 
the  Post's  claim  that  Julia  Roberts  made 
out  with  a  woman  at  Hogs  &  Heifers. 
You  can  read  the  item  in  Newsday. 

—New  York  Daily  News, 
September  12,  1996. 

As  to  reports  of  Julia  kissing  another 
woman,  her  publicist  laughs.  "Tlie  only 
person  who  got  a  serious  kiss  that  night  was 
[Roberts's  then  boyfriend]  Pat  Manocchia." 
—New  York  Newsday, 
September  10,  1996. 

All  of  which  merely  served  as  prologue 
for  Notting  Hill,  which  is  set  in  the  charm- 
ing London  neighborhood  of  the  same 
name.  As  in  Richard  Curtis's  previous 
film,  Four  Weddings  and  a  Funeral,  Grant 


co-stars  as  a  fumbling,  floppy-haired  bloke 
smitten  and  tortured  by  an  untouchable 
American  princess. 

Curtis  insists  that  the  model  for  Roberts's 
character  was  not  Julia  Roberts,  but  a 
hybrid  of  Grace  Kelly  and  Audrey  Hep- 
burn ("Neither  of  whom  were  available," 
he  says).  But  Curtis,  Grant,  and  director 
Roger  Michell  all  agreed:  Who  better  to 
play  the  world's  most  mythic,  inaccessible, 
and  intimidating  star  than  the  world's  most 
mythic,  inaccessible,  and  intimidating  star? 

Just  how  intimidating  became  clear  when 
the  script  was  sent  to  Roberts  in  June  1997, 
as  the  embers  of  BrassiereGate  still  flick- 
ered. "How  boring,"  she  said  to  her  agent. 
"How  tedious— what  a  stupid  thing  for  me 
to  do."  She  read  the  script  only  because  it 
had  been  written  by  Curtis,  whom  she'd 
once  called  "a  genius"  during  a  television 
interview.  (We  know  this  because  callers  to 
Curtis's  home  were  greeted  with  the  quota- 
tion on  his  answering  machine.)  "Fuck,  I'm 
gonna  do  this  movie,"  Roberts  said,  almost 
against  her  better  judgment.  She  could  al- 
ready hear  the  press-junket  questions,  so  she 
told  herself,  Well,  since  everyone  will  think 
it's  about  me,  I'll  just  take  a  little  European 
vacation  and  be  me  for  three  months. 

The  filmmakers'  immediate  reaction  to 
her  interest  was  terror.  Julia  Roberts  does 
that  to  people.  Curtis  and  Michell,  accom- 
panied by  producer  Duncan  Kenworthy, 
were  summoned  to  a  meeting  at  New  York's 
Four  Seasons  Hotel.  "The  three  of  us  had 
one  room,  and  we  all  went  off— me  to  the 
bathroom,  Duncan  to  the  lobby,  and  Roger 
to  the  bedroom,"  Curtis  recalls.  "We  emerged 
10  minutes  later  wearing  suits  for  the  first 
time  ever.  It  was  an  extraordinary  experi- 
ence to  see  the  real  Julia  Roberts  waiting  at 
the  dining-room  table.  She  was  10  years 
younger  than  some  of  us— 20  years  younger 
than  one  of  us— and  yet  so  obviously  in 
charge  that  it  was  alarming." 

The  meeting  went  well,  but  Roberts  re- 
mained aloof  even  as  the  addled  English- 
men tagged  along  to  her  scheduled  appear- 
ance on  Late  Show  with  David  Lettcrman. 
Afterward,  in  the  hallway,  Roberts  suddenly 
kissed  Michell,  said,  "Good  luck  with  your 
film,"  and  left.  "Worst  10  minutes  of  my 
life,"  Curtis  recalls  of  the  drive  back  to  the 
hotel.  "I  just  sat  in  the  back  of  the  car, 
winded  and  horrified,  and  finally  said,  'You 
guys  did  hear  what  she  said?'" 

Several  days  later,  accepting  much  less 
than  her  usual  fee,  Roberts  signed  on. 

Notting  Hill  was  filmed  an  hour  outside 
London,  on  a  set  designed  to  look 
much  like  the  neighborhood  where  Curtis 
lives  (thus  requiring  him  to  leave  home  in 
the  morning,  drive  an  hour,  and  arrive  at 
what  looked  like  his  front  door).  Early  on. 


N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Julia  Robert 


more  skittish  than  usual 
I    he  says,  "When  he's  ner- 
vous   v  mils  explains,  "his  voice  gees  up  an 

i \  ink-.  Grant  walked  around 

coi  plaining  thai  Roberts's  voice  was  signif- 
lower  than  his  Asked  to  summarize 
his  feelings  about  working  with  hei  after  the 
unfortunate  armchair  incident  of  1992,  Grant 
pauses  "I  ear,"  he  says,  half-seriously.  "1 
think  the  emotion  you  have  when  you  first 
meet  someone  tends  to  linger  with  you.  1 
was  all  ready  to  be  scared,  and  I  must  say, 
the  tear  never  quite  left  me." 

Julia  Anxiety  was  pervasive.  At  one  point, 
Roberts  concedes,  Michell  nervously  ap- 
proached her  when  he  thought  she  had  too 
much  makeup  on  and  whispered,  "Uramm 
. . .  would  you  mind  terribly  washing  your 
face?" 

Roberts,  meantime,  was  initially  petrified 
by  the  sheer  Britty-ness  of  it  all,  given  that 
both  Grant  and  Curtis  tend  to  produce  art- 
fully crafted  pearls  of  wit.  Her  early  train- 
ing basically  amounted  to  an  episode  of 
Crime  Story,  the  mid-80s  Dennis  Farina  ve- 
hicle, and  here  she  was  working  with  actors 
who  had  spent  years  doing  Othello  at  the 
Barbican. 

Soon  Roberts  confronted  the  pitfalls  of 
playing  a  character  who,  she  concluded, 
only  seemed  to  be  modeled  on  her  (where- 
as her  cameo  as  herself  in  Robert  Altaian's 
1992  The  Player  was,  by  definition,  Julia 
Roberts).  "I  thought  I  was  going  into  famil- 
iar territory,"  Roberts  says,  "but  ended  up 
doing  twice  the  effort  because  I  wasn't  pre- 
pared for  effort."  At  times  she  didn't  know 
whether  to  be  Julia  or  her  character,  Anna 
Scott:  Stepford  Acting.  "I  was  struggling 
with  playing  a  person  who  really  only  shares 
an  occupation  and  a  height  and  a  weight 
and  a  status  with  me." 

For  starters,  Anna  Scott's  troubles  begin 
when,  in  a  revelation  common  to  all  sorts  of 
stars,  the  tabloids  unearth  nude  photographs 
which  Scott  had  posed  for  early  in  her  ca- 
reer. "I  didn't  agree  with  what  she  did,  first 
of  all,"  says  Roberts,  who  has  never  posed 
nude  for  anybody  (though  she  does  tiptoe 
up  to  the  line  in  this  film).  "Didn't  agree 
with  how  she  got  into  this  mess— I  would 
never  have  been  in  that  situation.  Didn't 
agree  with  the  way  she  was  dealing  with 
it."  Basically,  Anna  Scott  freaks.  "Didn't 
agree  with  the  way  she  was  reacting  to  it. 
Didn't  agree  with  any  of  that  stuff."  When 
Roberts  took  issue  with  Scott's  behavior, 
Michell  would  calmly  respond,  "Anna 
Scott— different  person. " 

Another  moment  when  Roberts  respect- 
fully pleaded  artistic  difference  came  during 
a  crucial  morning-after  scene  in  Grant's 
apartment.  Anna  Scott,  lying  in  bed,  quotes 


thi  famous  line  thai  Rita  Hayworth  laid  il 
tei  stalling  in  (iilila:  "They  go  to  bed  with 
Gilda,  they  wake  up  with  me."  Watching 
that  scene,  it's  damn  near  impossible  to  ig- 
nore  the  obvious  freight  Whoa!  That's  Jul- 
ia Roberts'  and  she  fully  understands  just 
how  ferociously  those  words  will  be  quoted 
and  dissected  once  the  film  opens.  "I  hate 
to  say  anything  negative  about  what  Rich- 
ard wrote,  because  he's  a  genius,  but  I  hated 
saying  that  line,"  she  says.  "To  me,  it  was 
nails  on  a  chalkboard.  I  don't  really  believe 
any  of  that." 

And  yet  . . .  and  yet.  In  her  capacity  as 
the  film's  unofficial  technical  adviser, 
Roberts  transferred  her  own  experiences  to 
Anna  Scott's  in  a  hundred  small  ways.  (For 
that  matter,  so  did  Grant,  who  says,  "I 
think  the  fact  that  the  story  involves  tab- 
loids was  quite  an  attraction  to  both  of 
us.")  "She  claims  it's  not  about  her,"  says 
Curtis,  who  adores  Roberts.  "But  we  were 
definitely  getting  emotions  which  were  close 
to  what  we  thought  she  must  have  felt.  I 
think  she  takes  the  subject  less  seriously 
than  the  girl  in  the  movie  does,  but  ..." 

The  irony  resonates  even  in  the  film's 
opening  sequence,  a  montage  of  glam 
shots  detailing  Anna  Scott's  arrival  at  a 
lavish  Hollywood  premiere,  complete  with 
the  feline  head  pivot:  life  imitating  art  imi- 
tating art  imitating  life.  "One  day  we  all 
watched  those  three  minutes,  and  at  the 
end  we  were  stunned,"  Curtis  recalls.  "We 
said,  'Fuck!  Tltat's  who  we're  dealing  with.' 
It's  very  easy  when  you're  dealing  with  a 
very  reasonable,  lovely,  relaxed,  30-year- 
old  woman  to  forget  that  that's  also  the 
Julia  Roberts  who,  for  10  years  before- 
hand, you  could  never  have  gotten  within  a 
hundred  yards  of.  It  was  a  freakish  mo- 
ment when  we  realized  that  the  woman  we 
were  dealing  with  was  actually  both  those 
things:  this  relaxed  person  and  this  un- 
touchable, iconic  object  of  which  there  are 
so  many  photographs." 

Speaking  of  photographs  and  the  people 
who  love  them,  the  paparazzi  flocked  to 
this  rare  mingling  of  two  proud  tabloid 
warhorses:  Roberts  and  Grant.  "It  was  sur- 
real," Grant  recalls,  invoking  a  word  that 
generally  describes  the  whole  experience. 
"We  were  shooting  scenes  in  Notting  Hill, 
where  we  had  a  hundred  extras  playing  pa- 
parazzi, and  then  we  had  a  hundred  papa- 
razzi paparazzi-ing  the  paparazzi."  But  the 
fun  really  heated  up  when  Roberts  was  joined 
by  her  boyfriend,  the  unreasonably  well- 
constructed  Benjamin  Bratt,  better  known 
as  Detective  "Rey"  Curtis  on  the  NBC  crime 
show  Law  &  Order.  After  filming  scenes  in 
which  she  was  hounded  by  fake  tabloid 
jackals,  Roberts  was  periodically  tailed  by 
real  jackals,  who  for  years  had  been  print- 
ing obviously  libelous  rubbish  like  this: 


Sandra  Bullock  seems  to  have  usurped 
Julia  Roberts'  role  as  the  movie  star  you'c 
most  like  to  go  howling  with. 

—New  York  Daily  Ne 

■ 

So  here  we  are,  back  at  square  one,  w 
Roberts  still  attempting  to  decipher  wl 
the  fuss  is  all  about.  She's  not  the  least 
angry,  resentful,  or  jaded,  and  she's  i 
cussing  the  subject  only  because  a  repor 
keeps  egging  her  on— she's  not  pulling 
Courtney  Love,  by  turns  courting  and  c 
cifying  the  press.  She  never  limits  wl 
questions  can  be  asked,  never  cries  con 
niently.  Her  answers  are  crisp  and  intellige 
and  she  offers  perfect  sound  bites  on,  saj 

The  "Difficult"  Thing:  "Certainly  th 
have  been  plenty  of  people,  in  the  coui 
of  making  20  movies,  that  I  didn't  get  alo 
with.  But  I  have  gotten  along  swimmin; 
with  95  percent  of  the  people  I've  work 
with." 

The  Celebrity  Thing:  "I  work  wher 
want  to  work,  and  I  work  with  people  tl 
I  want  to  work  with.  I  travel  hither  and  y 
to  fabulous  places.  I'm  surrounded  by  wc 
derful,  interesting  people.  I  live  a  privileg 
life— hugely  privileged.  It's  an  excellent  li 
I'm  rich.  I'm  happy.  I  have  a  great  job. 
would  be  absurd  to  pretend  that  it's  ai 
thing  different.  I'm  like  a  pig  in  shit." 

The  Kiefer  Thing:  Well,  she'd  be  glad 
talk  about  him,  but,  actually,  she  has 
spoken  to  the  guy  in  years  and  has  no  id 
where  he  lives 

She  even  indulges  the  occasional  qu 
tion  about  Bratt,  whom  she  has  been  seei 
for  a  year  and  a  half.  "We  met  in  a  rest; 
rant,"  she  says,  then  vaguely  describes  h< 
"he  walked  in,  and  I  looked  up  at  him,  a 
it  was  like  something  hit  me  over  the  he 
with  a  bat."  Which  is  convenient,  since  fi 
dining  has  become  a  kind  of  leitmotif 
their  uniquely  public  private  courtsh 
Scenes  from  the  happy  couple's  New  A 
ventures  in  Gastronomy 


. 


» 


Julia  Roberts  and  Benjamin  Bratt  sipping 
latte  while  circling  downtown  real-estate 
listings  at  Cafe  Lure  on  Sullivan  Street. 

-New  York  Pc 

i 
Julia  Roberts  and  Benjamin  Bratt  kissing 

between  bites  of  bacon  and  eggs  at  Cafeterii 

-New  York  Daily  Ne\ 


She  will  spar  with  the  best  of  them,  a 
there  isn't  a  question  that  she  can't 
swer  backwards  in  her  sleep.  Go  ahead:  a 
about  the  $17  million  she  received  for  tl 
summer's  Runaway  Bride,  a  romantic  con 
dy  which  reunites  her  with  Richard  Ge 
The  question  routinely  arises  on  press  j 
kets,  those  gruesome  publicity  orgies  sp> 
sored  by  film  studios  (and  deftly  lampoon] 
in  Notting  Hill,  when  Grant  masquerac 


I 

ufH 


VANITY     FAIR 


an  "equine  journalist"  for  a  fictitious 
gazine  called  Horse  and  Hound).  Yes, 
jerts  says  graciously,  movie  stars  are 
urdly  overpaid.  "[But]  you  don't  sit 
m  at  lunch  with  someone  and  ask,  'So, 
v  much  do  you  make?'  That's  inappro- 
ite.  I  would  never  ask  you  that.  And  if 
id,  how  would  that  make  you  feel?"  The 
iter  becomes  the  hunted:  "So,  what  do 
do  with  that  money?  And  what's  your 
bracket  like?" 

I  fact,  her  media  skills  are  so  finely  cal- 
jrated  that  she  can  afford  to  let  her 
rd  down  every  now  and  then.  "Like 
:n  I  said  how  I  met  Benjamin,"  she 
;ins.  "The  actual  story  is  wildly  inter- 
ng  and  calamity-filled  and  hilarious 
1  wonderful  and  all  these  great  things 
t  are  incredibly  personal  and  private  to 
So  the  expedient,  for-world-publication 
wer  is:  'We  met  in  a  restaurant.'  Now, 
definition,  that's   not  even  true.   We 


didn't  even  speak  to  each  other  that  night." 
Roberts  reads  the  New  York  tabloids— 
not  every  day,  but  sometimes.  She  does  this 
because  she's  a  New  Yorker,  and  that's  what 
New  Yorkers  do.  They  read  about  other  New 
Yorkers.  "We  all  have  our  off  days,  right?" 
she  says  philosophically.  "Sometimes  it  hurts 
my  feelings,  and  if  it  affects  my  family,  that 
kind  of  troubles  me.  But  if  it's  just  me 
they're  aiming  at,  I  don't  care." 

Which  is  why  she  often  walks  the  streets, 
shops  unaccompanied,  and  famously  rides 
the  subway,  even  at  night.  She  has  no  cooks, 
no  drivers,  no  stylists,  no  toadies.  She  is  a 
constant  presence  in  and  around  Green- 
wich Village— apartment  hunting  with  Bratt, 
having  coffee  with  Susan  Sarandon,  shop- 
ping for  soy  milk  at  the  Korean  deli.  "You 
become  kind  of  a  fixture,"  she  says,  "and 
documenting  you  on  a  day-to-day  basis  is 
an  uninteresting  thing  even  to  the  most  ab- 
surd person."  Funny  thing,  her  celebrity: 
the  more  "normal"  she  acts,  the  less  she  is 


hounded.  "Oh,  God— so  much  less,"  Rob- 
erts says.  "So  much  less." 

At  lunch  one  afternoon,  while  picking 
over  a  salad  dressed  in  a  refreshingly  tart 
vinaigrette,  she  explains  why.  "What  do  I 
care  if  they  know  what  salad  dressing  I'm 
using?"  she  says,  and  smiles.  "If  you  take  it 
down  to  its  simplest  form,  here's  a  stranger 
commenting  on  your  personality,  your  life, 
your  hair— whatever.  That  amounts  to  vapor 
to  me."  (Then  again,  she  later  points  out,  if 
a  reporter  were  to  jump  out  of  a  hedge 
tonight,  "I  would  bust  some  ass") 

She  leans  in  close.  "Before  I  even  walk  in 
the  door,  I  believe  a  lot  of  them  have  their 
thesis,"  she  says,  only  half-seriously.  "They 
have  their  little  title,  and  there's  very  little  I 
can  do  to  conform  to  something  that  I  don't 
know  exists."  She  thinks  for  a  moment,  then 
leans  closer.  "I  actually  said  this  to  my  pub- 
licist last  night:  'I'm  just  gonna  walk  in  and 
say,  "So,  what  are  you  writing?"" 

The  nerve.  □ 


onty  Python 


itinued  hrom  pagp  i8i  trying  to  per- 
de  the  shopkeeper  the  bird  has  perished], 

wrote  a  parody  of  it,  an  "Astrology" 
tch  ("  ...  the  zodiacal  signs,  the  horo- 
pic  fates,  the  astrological  portents,  the 
ens,  the  genethliac  prognostications  ..."). 
ke  read  this  out  and  everybody  laughed 
1  it  went  in,  and  we  were  just  amazed  be- 
ise  we'd  written  it  as  a  joke,  really.  We 
ught  they'd  go,  "Oh,  come  on!  Get 
iy!  Making  fun  of  our  writing?"  But  we 
e  quite  surprised  that  it  actually  got  into 

show!  They  all  thought  it  was  funny,  so 
didn't  say,  "Actually  it  was  just  a  parody 
one  of  yours."  I  kept  a  bit  quiet,  and  it 

into  the  Yes  Pile. 

ERIC  IDLE:  Casting  always  came 

-  last  in  everything.  It  was  usu- 

!►_.  ally  fairly  easy,  like  the  John 

parts  were  obvious— people 

0  shouted  or  were  cruel  to  defenseless 
>ple  or  animals.  Mike  and  I  were  usually 

ones  who  could  play  each  other's  parts, 
ually  people  spoke  up  if  they  felt  they 
re  a  bit  light  in  a  show;  they  might  sulk 
:il  someone  noticed,  but  it  was  swings 

1  roundabouts,  really.  Also,  we  had  no 
Is  to  sulk  or  feel  left  out  (i.e.,  Saturday 
\ht  Live),  and  we  would  happily  grab 
st  of  the  girls'  parts  for  ourselves.  Serve 
l  right,  too.  Get  their  own  bloody  shows! 


fife.''' 


MICHAEL  PALIN:  Personally,  I  al- 
ways enjoyed  when  you  were  able 
to  flesh  the  character  out  a  bit, 
even  within  a  sketch.  I  mean,  I 


loved  playing  the  man  in  the  "Dead  Parrot" 
sketch  or  the  "Cheese  Shop"  because  you 
can  give  them  some  sort  of  character— they're 
not  just  somebody  saying,  "No,  we  haven't 
got  this,"  "No,  we  haven't  got  that."  It  isn't 
just  the  words,  it's  the  evasiveness  and  the  de- 
gree of  evasiveness,  and  why  a  man  should 
be  that  evasive,  and  what's  going  through  his 
mind  [that]  appeals  to  me.  I  really  enjoyed 
getting  to  grips  with  characters  like  that,  even 
within  a  fairly  short  sketch. . . . 

I'd  like  to  think  we  naturally  were  root- 
ing for  every  sketch  [rather  than]  anyone 
wanting  their  sketches  to  go  down  better,  al- 
though there  probably  was  a  little  bit  of 
that,  but  basically  you  just  wanted  the  show 
to  have  laughs  all  the  way  through. 

Tfie  members  of  Monty  Python  proved  that— 
in  their  case  at  least—six  strong  personalities 
were  capable  of  subsuming  themselves  to  a 
single  comic  entity.  Tins  is  not  to  suggest, 
however,  that  tension  and  temperament  did 
not  intrude. 

ERIC  IDLE:  It  seems  to  me  since 
all  comedians  seek  control  we 
fwere  a  group  of  potential  con- 
trollers. Obviously  some  are  more 
manipulative  than  others,  or  cleverer  at  get- 
ting their  own  way.  Cleese  is  the  most  can- 
ny, but  everyone  had  their  ways.  Mike 
would  charm  himself  into  things.  Terry  J. 
would  simply  not  listen  to  anyone  else. 

/T^~W  JOHN  CLEESE:  Michael's  great  aim 
lrt>  Y*  in  life  is  to  be  affable.  And  this 
*n    I  makes  him  enormously  pleasant  and 
^^  enormously  good  company,  but  infuri- 
ating if  he  doesn't  want  to  do  something,  or 


if  he  disagrees  with  something,  because  it's 
almost  impossible  for  him  to  say  so  at  the 
time.  But  we  were  all  cowards;  we  all  avoid 
confrontations  about  anything  that  wasn't 
to  do  with  the  material.  Those  kinds  of 
things  never  got  spoken  about;  we  were 
very  English  in  a  sense  that  any  kind  of  di- 
rect confrontation  about  anything  emotion- 
al was  impossible. 

MICHAEL  PALIN:  I  think  more  than 
M  anybody  Terry  Jones  kept  the 


group  together  and  kept  it  going  for- 
ward, because  Terry's  probably  got 
more  energy,  sheer  mental  energy.  If  he  com- 
mits to  an  idea,  Terry  will  really  follow  it 
through.  And  right  from  the  very  first  discus- 
sions we  had  about  Python,  Terry  was  al- 
ways positive  about  what  the  group  could  do 
and  what  we  could  achieve.  I  think  he  was 
the  one  who  worked  most  to  get  this  new 
form,  this  new  shape  together.  He  was  always 
hurrying  the  director  in  editing  sessions  and 
all  that.  When  the  television  series  was  com- 
ing to  an  end,  he  was  the  one  who  was  most 
keen  to  try  and  get  a  film  together. 

fJOHN  CLEESE:  One  or  two  people 
|  in  the  BBC  definitely  saw  me  as 
the  mover  of  the  group.  The  reality 
was  that  Terry  Jones  and  I  were 
probably  the  strongest  personalities.  The  neg- 
ative side  of  that  is,  we  were  probably  the 
two  who  argued  the  most,  because  we  cared 
terribly  about  the  material.  You  could  say  we 
were  young  and  naive;  writers  are  like  this 
when  they  start.  The  funny  thing  was,  we 
never  argued  about  the  acting.  No  one  ever 
got  into  a  snit  because  they  hadn't  got  some 
role;  all  the  arguments  were  about  the  mate- 


VANITY      FAIR 


\lonl\  Python 


Jd  sometimes  gel  quite  in- 
I  absurdly  silly.  I  remember  in  one 
id  .1  kind  oi  taxidermized  ani- 
from  the  ceiling  with  four  light- 
bull  •  in  n .  feet;  we  got  into  quite  an  acrimo- 
lebate  about  whether  it  should  be  a 
it  a  goat.  And  in  retrospect  it's  hilari- 
ous that  we  could  get  cross  with  each  other 
about  whether  it  should  be  a  sheep  or  a 
goat!  But  we  cared  so  much  about  the  mate- 
rial that  we  fought  quite  a  lot. 

TERRY  GILLIAM:  John's  a  hard 
one.  John  loves  manipulating 
£  —  ^  and  controlling;  he's  only  com- 
fortable when  he's  doing  that. 
When  he  lets  go  of  control  and  just  starts 
hanging  out,  he  can  only  do  it  for  a  short 
while  and  then  the  panic  sets  in,  it  really 
sets  in.  I  mean,  after  we  did  Holy  Grail  we 
were  in  Amsterdam  all  together  promoting 
it,  and  we  went  on  a  pub  crawl  one  night, 
and  we  were  having  a  great  time,  all  of  us. 
And  we  were  getting  drunk  and  speaking 
openly,  all  the  things  that  a  group  can  never 
[otherwise  do],  and  it  really  was  getting  fun- 
ny, and  we  were  saying  a  lot  of  things  that 
needed  to  be  said  in  a  really  jolly,  drunken 
way.  And  at  a  certain  point  John  just  had  to 
pull  back  from  it;  he  was  relaxing,  he  was 
letting  down  his  guard  too  much,  and  he 
went  back  off  wherever  he  went.  It  was  real- 
ly weird.  And  it  was  a  pity  because  we  were 
having  a  good  time,  and  John  was  having  a 
good  time,  and  he  couldn't  allow  himself  to 
not  try  to  be  in  control. 

I  think  his  attempt  to  try  and  control 
things  gave  a  sense  there  was  always  some- 
thing one  could  go  against— his  need  to 
control  [versus]  our  need  to  not  be  con- 
trolled, and  that's  such  an  interesting  dy- 
namic. [But]  I  don't  know  if  that's  exactly 
the  best  use  of  everybody  in  the  group! 

MICHAEL  PALIN:  John  and  Graham 
^8^  took  some  pleasure  in  writing 
something  which  shocked  an  audi- 
!  ence.  I  think  this  came  from  with- 
in, but  John  never  seemed  to  be  totally 
happy  or  centered— there  was  always  some- 
thing which  John  was  having  to  cope  with. 
And  that  desire  to  shock,  I  think,  came 
from  the  way  Graham  was,  too.  Graham 
was  a  genuine  outsider,  a  very  straitlaced 
man  who  was  homosexual  and  an  alcoholic 
at  that  time  and  therefore  found  himself 
constantly  in  conflict  with  people,  and  so 
he  would  fight  back.  And  the  two  of  them 
would  put  together  things  like  the  "Under- 
taker" sketch  purely  because  they  knew  it 
was  outrageous  [Cleese  goes  to  a  mortuary 
following  his  mum's  death;  Chapman,  the 
undertaker,  eventually  suggests  they  eat  her 


remains],  and  ye!  they  did  it  in  a  way  none 

of  the  other  Pythons  would  have  done,  so 
it  was  quite  refreshing.  When  we  lirst  heard 
that,  we  thought.  Well,  we  just  can't  do  it. 
But  then  you  think  about  it:  this  is  a  really 
good,  refreshing  view  of  death,  talking 
about  it  that  way.  In  that  particular  case  I 
think  yes,  there  was  a  desire  to  shock  an 
audience  by  talking  about  something  that 
was  not  talked  about. 

DOUGLAS  ADAMS  (before  he  authored  Tlie 
Hitchhiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy,  Adams  had 
been  a  writing  partner  of  Chapman's  on 
non-Python  projects  and  had  contributed 
some  material  to  Python's  final  television 
season):  It's  easy  to  underestimate  Graham's 
great  role  in  Python,  because  he  was  in 
many  ways  the  least  distinctive  in  a  lot  of 
people's  minds.  The  others  would  all  tell  sto- 
ries of  how  they'd  all  be  suggesting  this  and 
arguing  about  that,  and  Graham  would  sit 
there  puffing  on  his  pipe  and  quietly,  in 
his  tweedy  way,  think  very,  very  naughty 
thoughts,  and  then  every  now  and  then 
would  just  interject  something  completely 
off-the-wall  that  would  catch  everybody  by 
surprise,  and  then  substantially  turn  some- 
thing around.  There's  a  much-repeated  story 
I  certainly  heard  from  Graham,  which  was 
[about]  a  sketch  that  John  had  written  by 
himself.  It  was  based  on  something  that 
made  him  very,  very  cross,  which  is  often 
where  a  good  sketch  would  come  from,  be- 
cause he'd  been  sold  a  faulty  toaster  and  he 
was  going  to  complain  about  it.  He  wrote 
this  whole  sketch  about  this  faulty  toaster, 
and  it  was  a  beautifully  written,  beautifully 
crafted  sketch,  good  sort  of  pear  shape  to  it, 
and  Graham  must  have  listened  to  it  or  read 
it.  As  the  story  goes,  John  was  feeling  a  bit 
cross  that  he'd  done  all  this  work  and 
Graham  was  merely  sitting  there,  and 
Graham's  only  remark  was  "Yes,  it's  boring, 
why  not  make  it  a  parrot  instead?"  Where- 
upon it  suddenly  transforms  into  one  of 
the  most  famous  sketches  they  ever  did. 

DAVID  SHERLOCK  (Chapman's  companion 
of  23  years):  Graham  was  fairly  notorious 
as  a  boozer  through  the  70s,  and  yet  he 
could  often  start  work  at  11  in  the  morning 
with  a  large  tumbler  of  gin  and  tonic  beside 
him  and  work  through  the  whole  day  ap- 
parently sober,  absolutely  totally  undetect- 
able. He  was  a  gentleman  drunk,  rather  like 
Jimmy  Stewart  in  Harvey,  sort  of  gentle. 
The  whole  fun  of  that  movie  is  that  Jimmy 
Stewart  is  actually  drunk  all  the  time  and 
yet  you're  never  quite  sure.  That  was  the 
same  with  Graham. 


JOHN  CLEESE:  I  have  one  very, 

,,  I  very,  very  clear  memory,  and  it 

*'   was  the  day  we  were  shooting  "The 

Upper-Class  Twit  of  the  Year"  [an 


• 


"athletic"  competition  lor  upper-class  tw 
at  some  big  sports  arena  in  north  London 
And  Now  for  Something  Completely  Differ 
[a  film  version  of  some  of  the  group's  b 
sketches].  Graham  for  some  reason  was, 
there,  and  we  all  wanted  to  check  a  poin 
the  script,  and  none  of  us  could  find  a  co 
and  Michael  said,  "Oh,  Graham's  got 
script  in  his  briefcase."  And  Michael  oper 
the  briefcase,  took  the  script  out,  and  tl 
did  a  double  take,  because  there  was  a  bo 
(I  think  of  vodka)  in  the  briefcase.  And  I 
chael  looked  absolutely  stunned,  and  so 
body  said,  "What's  the  matter?"  And 
chael  said,  "That  was  full  when  we  left 
morning,"  and  it  was  like  quarter  past 
and  the  bottle  was  half  empty.  That  was 
moment  when  I  realized  that  instead 
needing  a  bit  of  a  drink  now  and  then, 
was  seriously  into  it.  But  my  recollectior 
that  his  performing  began  to  get  affected 
the  second  season. 

TERRY  JONES:  When  he  was  dri 
ing,  the  worst  thing  would  be 
couldn't  remember  his  lines,  a 
[Ian  MacNaughton,  the  group's 
rector]  would  be  quite  remorseless  with  hi 
like  in  the  studio  shows,  and  make  him 
over  and  do  it.  I  remember  doing  one  ske 
where  we  must  have  done  about  24  takes 
something,  and  then  we  had  a  problem 
cause  when  Graham  eventually  got  the  1 
right,  the  audience  cheered.  [Just  listening 
it],  you  don't  know  why  there's  cheering!  ' 
tried  taking  the  cheer  off  [in  the  edit] 
room],  but  we  couldn't  quite  do  it.  That  v 
a  bit  awkward. 


TERRY  GILLIAM:  Graham  to  me  \ 
the  guy  that  wherever  we  we 
he  was  the  one  who  would  coi 

back  the  next  morning  with  ta 
that  we  all  wanted  to  hear,  because  he  v 
out  there.  Whenever  you  go  into  a  pul 
restaurant  suddenly  he'd  disappear.  You  lo 
around;  he'd  be  under  somebody  else's  tal 
licking  the  girl's  feet  while  her  date  is  the 
That  was  the  real  thing;  he  was  genuin 
mad.  And  it's  funny  because  he  was  really 
a  sense  the  shyest  and  most  conservative 
pushed  himself  right  out  there  all  the  time 


r-v 


Tlte  first  Python  show,  broadcast  on  Octo, 
5,  1969,  demonstrated  quite  clearly  that 
group  was  after  something  uncategorizable 
presented  a  surreal  mix  of  violence  (Wolfgc 
Amadeus  Mozart  hosts  a  program  depict, 
famous  deaths);  television  parodies  ("We  fi 
that  9  out  of  10  British  housewives  can't 
the  difference  between  Whizzo  Butter  anc 
dead  crab."  "It's  true,  we  can't!");  and  inteli 
tually  minted  comic  bits  (Picasso  paints  wl 
riding  a  bicycle,  followed  by  Kandinsky,  M< 
drian,  Chagall,  Miro,  Dufy  Jackson  Polio 
"...  and  Bernard  Buffet  making  a  break  [ 


VANITY     FAIR 


o  outside").  Running  throughout  the  pro- 
am  were  gags  and  animations  about  pigs, 
tough  the  series  wasn't  an  overnight  sensa- 
m,  it  quickly  found  a  devoted  audience. 

^^  MICHAEL  PALIN:  Partly  because  of 
\^~J  its  programming  and  the  time  it 
'  ^f,  went  out  [late  on  Sunday  nights], 
^^  Py/hon  clearly  was  seen  as  very 
uch  for  an  adult  audience,  which  is  very 
teresting  because  nowadays  the  spirit  of 
>thon  burns  on  in  10 -year-olds,  12-year- 
ds,  13-year-olds— so  many  children  love 
'thon.  But  at  the  time  it  was  seen  as  an 
iult  show.  I'd  never  really  been  involved  in 
i  "adult"  show,  kind  of  X-rated  comedy 
ow,  and  this  seemed  to  be  the  image  of 

And  also  we  became  sort  of  the  intellec- 
als'  darling  for  a  bit,  written  up  in  The 
bserver,  things  like  that. 

A^  TERRY  GILLIAM:  The  BBC  I  think 
£*1   were  constantly  uncomfortable 

,^JL  with  us.  They  didn't  know  quite 
)|p  W  what  we  were,  and  I  think  they 
2re  slightly  embarrassed  by  it,  and  yet  it 
as  too  successful,  it  was  making  all  this 
)ise  out  there.  When  they  took  us  off  after 
e  fourth  show  (this  was  the  first  series), 
e  were  off  for  a  couple  of  weeks.  I  think 
iere  was  a  serious  attempt  to  ditch  it  at 
iat  point.  But  there  was  too  much  noise 
;ing  made  by  us.  They  would  put  us  out 

all  these  different  times,  and  change  it, 
it  somehow  the  word  got  out  and  they 
;pt  us  on. 

JOHN  CLEESE:  I  had  a  friend  who 
was  trying  to  watch  the  series, 
and  he  sat  down  in  his  hotel 
room  in  Newcastle  and  switched 
on  and  there  was  this  hysterical  start  to 
(onty  Python  about  this  guy  wandering 
-ound  being  terribly  boring  about  all  the 
icient  monuments  around  Newcastle. 
nd  he  watched  it  falling  about,  and  said 
s  real  nerve  to  do  this,  it's  really  terrific, 
id  what  a  great  start  to  the  show.  And 
jout  20  minutes  in  he  realized  it  was 
ome  local  program— Newcastle  had  gone 
ff-network  at  that  hour]. 
The  nicest  thing  anybody  ever  said  about 
ython  was  that  they  could  never  watch  the 
2ws  after  it.  You  get  in  a  certain  frame  of 
dnd  and  then  almost  anything's  funny! 

he  group  would  go  on  to  film  two  more  13- 
lisode  seasons  for  the  BBC  (as  well  as  a 
>urth  half-season  in  which  Cleese  declined 
participate,  having  grown  bored  with  the 
xtch  format).  In  the  spring  of  1974,  the 
ythons  embarked  on  production  of  their 
rst  "real"  film,  Monty  Python  and  the 
[oly  Grail,  a  jaunty  but  painstakingly  real- 
ed  vision  of  Arthurian  Britain.  The  thin 
iread  of  a  story— the  knights  of  Camelot 


searching  for  the  Holy  Grail— allowed  for  a 
joyfully  irreverent  mixture  of  comic  riffs, 
mock  heroics,  and  song  in  which  bits  and 
pieces  of  Arthurian  mythology  (along  with 
the  stale  conventions  of  Hollywood  period 
epics)  were  all  targets  for  satire. 

TERRY  JONES:  Originally  the  script 
went  between  the  Middle  Ages 
and  the  20th  century,  and  ended 
with  [King  Arthur]  finding  the  Holy 
Grail  in  Harrods.  I  was  very  much  into  the 
Middle  Ages  with  my  Chaucer  stuff,  and  I 
had  not  been  very  keen  on  the  20th-century 
stuff.  Mike  had  come  up  with  this  horse- 
and-coconut  thing  at  one  stage  [instead  of 
riding  horses,  the  film's  characters  pretend 
to  ride  while  making  hoof-beat  sound  ef- 
fects with  a  pair  of  coconuts],  and  so  I 
suppose  in  a  group  meeting  I  said,  "Why 
don't  we  do  it  all  Middle  Ages?"  And  every- 
body seemed  to  agree.  Maybe  it  was  the 
perception  that  the  modern  material  wasn't 
stronger,  and  also  I  said  it  would  be  more 
interesting,  less  like  the  TV  shows,  if  it's  all 
set  in  one  period. 

There  was  quite  a  lot  of  debate  about 
[who  should  play  Arthur].  I  think  in  the 
end  nobody  wanted  to  do  it. 

DAVID  SHERLOCK:  Nobody  wanted  to  play 
the  lead  because  they  thought  it  was  ham- 
my,  it  was  too  dry.  All  they  wanted  to  do 
was  play  all  the  cameos,  where  you  could 
then  have  a  nice  long  break  before  doing 
the  next  cameo!  But  Graham  realized  not 
that  his  part  was  a  star  part  but  that  it  was 
essential  to  hold  the  rest  of  the  film  togeth- 
er, and  I  think  he  had  a  better  overview. 
That  may  be  simplistic— I'm  sure  they  all 
had  the  overview— but  they  didn't  want  to 
do  it,  and  he  said,  "O.K.,  I'll  do  it."  And 
inadvertently  stole  the  show. 


a  MICHAEL    PALIN:    Graham   as   a 
-«Sk   performer  had  a  quiet  intensity 


■  which,  if  you  look  at  all  of  his 
performances,  quite  unlike  any  of 
the  rest  of  us,  is  very  convincing  whatever 
he  does.  That's  why  he  was  so  good  as  Bri- 
an, so  good  as  Arthur.  Here  was  a  man 
who  genuinely  suffered,  you  know,  trying  to 
get  through  this  world— he  just  happened  to 
be  a  king,  it  wasn't  his  fault,  he  was  trying 
to  do  his  best,  and  all  these  people  around 
him  were  just  mucking  him  up. 

TERRY  JONES:  When  we  actually 
j-*^  ^  started  the  first  shot  of  Holy 
Grail,  I  was  going  to  shoot  this 
bit  on  the  edge  of  this  gorge,  and 
Graham  was  trembling  and  shaking,  wouldn't 
go  anywhere  near  the  edge.  I  think  he  said 
it  was  fear  of  heights,  which  we  thought 
was  really  odd  because  he'd  been  our 
mountaineering  expert.  I  certainly  didn't  re- 


alize this  was  because  he  was  doing  cold 
turkey  at  the  time,  he  was  trying  not  to 
drink.  So  we  couldn't  do  some  of  the  shots 
that  we  wanted  close  to  the  edge.  But  that 
was  all  sort  of  slightly  swallowed  up  by  dis- 
asters such  as  the  camera  shearing  its  gears 
on  the  first  take! 

The  technical  demands  of  filmmaking,  as 
opposed  to  television-making,  caused  some 
friction  between  co-directors  Terry  Jones  and 
Terry  Gilliam  and  the  rest  of  the  group. 

HOWARD  ATHERTON  (camera  operator  on 
Holy  Grail):  John  Cleese  was  very  impatient 
quite  often.  He  would  say,  "How  many 
laughs  in  that?"  In  other  words,  you're  wast- 
ing time  on  the  wrong  thing.  He  thought 
the  only  thing  you  should  spend  time  on 
was  getting  the  humor  right,  whereas  Terry 
Jones  and  Terry  Gilliam  especially  wanted 
it  to  look  like  a  film  and  not  like  television. 
So  there  was  always  that  battle  going  on  be- 
tween the  Pythons. 

TERRY  JONES:  I  remember  Mike 
^5^    getting   really   ratty   when   we 


were  doing  the  "Plague  Vil- 
lage." His  job  was  being  a  peas- 
ant who  had  to  crawl  through  the  mud  and 
go  to  one  spot  where  there  was  some 
chocolate  in  the  mud  and  he  had  to  start 
eating  this  chocolate.  He'd  spent  the  whole 
morning  [eating  this  fake  excrement],  then 
he  realized  that  he  wasn't  on-camera  all 
the  time.  He  did  get  a  bit  ratty  about  it, 
quite  rightly! 

JOHN  GOLDSTONE  (executive  producer  of 
Holy  Grail  and  sole  producer  of  the  group's 
subsequent  two  films):  Holy  Grail  was  very 
risky.  There  was  no  completion  guaranty,  it 
was  just  hoping  it  could  be  done,  it  really 
was.  [But]  it  wasn't  until  the  postproduc- 
tion  and  first  cut  that  anything  seemed  to 
be  awry.  We  had  this  disastrous  investors' 
screening  when  the  film  was  supposedly 
finished.  What  had  happened  was,  Terry 
Gilliam  and  Terry  Jones  decided  to  make  it 
as  real  as  possible,  to  have  a  soundtrack 
that  was  very  real,  bone-crunching  and 
everything.  And  so  at  this  screening  we 
had,  it  wasn't  getting  the  response  from  the 
audience  that  we'd  expected. 

TERRY  JONES:  It  started  off  with 
everybody  laughing  at  the  be- 
■  ginning  and  then  after  a  while 
^H  just  nothing;  the  whole  film  went 
through  [with]  no  laughter  at  all.  And  it 
was  awful— I  was  sitting  there  saying,  "It 
just  can't  be  unfunny."  So  I  went  and  re- 
dubbed  it,  and  as  soon  as  anybody  started 
talking  I  just  took  all  the  sound  effects 
out,  all  the  atmosphere,  everything.  I  went 
through  the  entire  film  doing  that,  and  that 


J  N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


\l)iil\  INlhon 


■  ii.  |p    ii  wa     lomething  about 
ack  filling  in  all  the  pauses. 

|#,''i  ERIC    IDLE:    Wc  had    13   previews, 

Wan***  ranging  from  bloody  awful  u>  fi- 
^kjfc.-  n.ill\  hilarious.  Thai's  what  good 
^^^comed)  (.•ililmg  does,  shifts  il  from 
a  theory  to  tailored  to  the  audience's  re- 
sponse It  helps  when  you  have  lour  new 
brains  (who  are  also  the  writers  and  the 
stars)  coming  in  and  suggesting  what  should 
be  cut  and  what  could  be  moved  elsewhere. 

During  a  promotional  tour  for  Holy  Grail, 
when  asked  what  the  group's  next  film  would 
be,  Idle  responded.  "Jesus  Christ:  Lust  for 
Glory."  That  quip  was  the  genesis  of  Monty 
Python's  next  film,  the  1979  biblical  spoof  Life 
of  Brian,  which  became  the  group's  greatest  fi- 
nancial success  and  sparred  the  Pythons  on  to 
their  final  film,  1983's  The  Meaning  of  Life. 

JOHN  CLEESE:  Everything  that  was 
good  about  Life  of  Brian  was  bad 
about  Meaning  of  Life.  Life  of  Bri- 
an, we  knew  instinctively  what  we 
were  writing  about,  everybody  was  writing 
well,  the  story  (which  we're  not  very  good  at) 
developed  remarkably  easily  and  organically, 
we  knew  that  we  were  onto  something  good 
and  funny  and  meaningful.  That  was  a  great 
project,  and  then  we  made  a  terrible  mistake: 
when  Life  of  Brian  came  out  and  it  was  such 
a  big  hit  (a  very  big  hit  by  our  standards), 
Denis  O'Brien  [the  group's  manager  at  the 
time]  said  to  us— and  it  remains  to  this  day 
the  single  most  misleading  bit  of  information 
I've  ever  been  given— "If  you  guys  make  an- 
other film  almost  straightaway,  you'll  never 
have  to  work  again  in  your  lives."  And  so  we 
started  trying  to  create  a  film,  even  though  we 
needed  a  break  from  each  other.  All  we  did 
was  accumulate  material,  a  third  of  which  was 
really  good,  a  third  of  which  was  O.K.,  a  third 
of  which  I  thought  was  not  good  enough. 

ERIC  IDLE:  We  never  found  the 
theme  till  the  end.  I  think  it 
would  have  been  perfect  if  we 
had  given  it  one  extra  draft.  We 
nearly  got  there,  but  John  was  reluctant  to 
meet,  so  we  just  went  ahead  and  shot  it  any- 
way. It  still  has  great  stuff  in  it  and  is  still 
marvelously  offensive! 

©TERRY  GILLIAM:  I  actually  think  we 
didn't  do  the  film  we  should  have 
done.  There  was  Monty  Python's 
World  War  III,  which  I  thought 
had  some  wonderful  stuff  in  there,  with  all 
the  soldiers  wearing  advertising,  like  race-car 
drivers— ads  are  being  taken  out  on  all  the 
soldiers,  on  the  weapons,  everything.  But 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


(hen  the  one  that  I  really  liked  was  a  whole 
Python  film  that  was  a  court  case.  We 
were  ifl  the  dock  and  the  prosecution  was 
in  to  prove  that  what  wc  were  watch- 
ing, this  film  we  had  made,  is  not  a  film, 

it's  a  lax  dodge. 

JOHN  GOLDSTONE:  When  I  went  out  to 
raise  the  money  for  Meaning  of  Life,  it  was 
already  a  given  that  the  Pythons  would  have 
to  have  final  cut  and  artistic  control.  Also, 
what  they  were  very  keen  about  by  then  was 
having  proper  fees  up  front,  so  that  needed 
a  major  studio  to  do  that  level  of  fee. 

There  was  a  little  bidding  war;  I  mean, 
every  studio  wanted  the  next  Python  film, 
and  I  just  felt  Universal  was  the  most  easy- 
going in  a  way.  It  was  kind  of  interesting 
how  the  thing  happened  as  well.  I  didn't 
show  them  the  screenplay,  I  just  did  one 
page,  which  was  the  lyrics  of  a  song  that  Eric 
had  written  about  what  was  going  to  be  in 
this  movie  ["There's  everything  in  this  movie 
/  Everything  that  fits  /  From  the  meaning  of 
life  in  the  Universe  /  To  girls  with  great  big 
tits  . . .  "]  and  they  bought  it  on  that. 

Things  had  changed  internally,  though, 
in  Python  by  then.  This  was  now  1982,  and 
they'd  all  been  doing  their  own  things  for  a 
while,  so  this  new  movie  somehow  wasn't 
done  with  quite  the  same  blinding  commit- 
ment as  the  earlier  ones. 

MICHAEL  PALIN:  I  tend  to  think 
r  that  the  only  creative  work 


thrives  on  economy,  in  a  sense. 
More  money  doesn't  mean  bet- 
ter comedy,  I  don't  think  it  ever  has.  The 
best  comedy  is  some  sort  of  complaint  or 
conflict  anyway— that's  what  it's  about— so 
it's  probably  better  if  the  comedy  writers  are 
up  against  it  than  if  they're  being  softened 
up  with  large  amounts  of  money,  because 
then  you  become  formulaic. 

TERRY  GILLIAM:  It  was  work  hab- 
its that  had  changed.  We  weren't 
all  at  the  same  level  trying  to 
work  just  for  the  show.  I  mean, 
lifestyles  were  getting  in  the  way:  "I'm  a 
Hollywood  Star,  I  need  this  ..."  It's  not 
[that]  one  is  right  or  wrong,  it's  just  they're 
different  ways  of  working.  Work  habits: 
that's  the  only  way  I  can  describe  it. 


In' 


JOHN  CLEESE:  I  think  there  was  a 
-  general  sense  that  [The  Meaning 
^lv  of  Life]  had  not  been  a  very  sat- 
X»  isfactory  experience,  and  while  I 
don't  remember  a  conscious  decision  not  to 
make  another  film,  I  think  it  was  like  when 
you  go  to  a  restaurant  that  isn't  very  good: 
you  don't  actually  say,  "I'm  never  going 
back  there  again,"  you  just  discover  three 
years  later  that  you've  never  been  drawn 
back.  I  think  it  was  like  that. 


On  October  4,  I'JW,  almost  20  yean  u>  th 

day  since  the  first  broadcast  of  Monty  P; 

thon'i   flying  Circus,  Graham  Chapmd 

died  iii  the  age  of  48.  On  March  7  IWI 
IlliO  gathered  the  Pythons  together  for  a 
informal  stage  appearance  during  the  II.' 
Comedy  Arts  Festival  in  Aspen,  Coloradi 
taping  the  proceedings  for  broadcast.  Apa 
from  being  the  first  public  meeting  of  all  fh 
surviving  Pythons  in  many  years,  the  oca 
sion  became  noteworthy  for  the  almost  sua 
legious  handling  of  the  supposed  "ashes"  i 
Graham  C  'hapman,  which  were  brought  up 
his  stead  and  which  ended  up  being  vaci 
umed  by  a  Dustbuster. 

JOHN  CLEESE:  What  was  real 
nice  about  Aspen  and  also  th 
subsequent  dinner  that  four  of  i 
'had  in  London  was  just  to  see  ho 
well  we  all  got  on.  As  the  main  cause  of  di 
pute  in  the  group  (which  was  the  materia 
has  faded  into  the  background,  it  enables  i 
all  to  get  on  in  the  way  that  we  basically  a 
ways  did  get  on— a  personal  level.  The  rel; 
tionships  have  always  been  quite  good;  it 
been  the  work  that's  thrown  up  the  cause  ( 
the  disagreements.  And  we  got  on  well,  an 
that's  why  we  thought  it  would  be  fun  to  d 
something  [for  the  group's  30th  anniversar 
this  year;  there  had  been  talk  of  a  sta§ 
show,  a  tour,  even  a  new  film]. 

But  then  the  very  next  day  Terry  Gilliai 
said  to  Michael  Palin  and  Terry  Jones  th; 
he  didn't  really  want  to  do  it,  which  is  m 
what  he  said  in  the  room.  And  then  son 
weeks,  months  later,  Michael  decided  h 
didn't  really  want  to  do  six  or  eight  weel 
[of  live  performances],  he  really  only  wante 
to  do  two.  So  trying  to  get  everybody's  neec 
together  has  proved  very  difficult. 

>  TERRY  GILLIAM:  That  Aspen  thinj 

it  was  like  aspic.  We  were  up  ther 

I  thought  we  were  almost  mun 

mined!  There's  a  crowd  three  c 

four  rows  back,  the  entire  cast  of  Cheer 

Ted  Danson  and  Woody  Harrelson,  grinnir 

with  these  beaming,  Moonie  smiles:  "It's  tl 

Pythons!"  And  we're  just  talking  like  [in 

tating  an  old  fogy],  "Well,  in  my  day  whe 

we  used  to  do  comedy  ..." 


ERIC  IDLE:  Aspen  was  very  ben 
ficial  for  us.  We  got  a  chance  t 
see  each  other  again— apart  froi  ipi 
Terry  Gilliam,  who  was  still  in  h 
fascist  "I'm  a  Director"  stage  and  wouldn 
have  dinner  with  us  but  went  running  off  I 
hang  out  with  Hunter  S.  Thompson.  Wh: 
a  lapse  of  taste!  Still,  he's  a  Yank,  you  kno\ 
Whether  we  will  ever  be  able  to  agree  c 
anything  ever  again  is  moot.  I  think  grout 
use  up  all  their  agreements  early  and  the 
all  that  is  left  is  to  disagree.  But  I'm  n<  | 
sure  whether  I  agree  with  that.  U 


JUNE     199 


h 


rtie  Shaw 


m  .ID  prom  pagi  i  «x  on  relationships. 
z  author  and  songwriter  Gene  Lees, 
;e  a  close  friend,  now  calls  Shaw  "one  of 

most  evil  men  I've  known  in  my  life." 
-icist  Sammy  Cahn  devotes  an  entire 
ipter  of  his  autobiography  to  his  former 
:nd  Shaw,  whom  he  calls  "the  Empty 
in,"  suggesting  a  hollow  chest  cavity, 
aning  no  heart. 

Shaw  admits  to  a  certain  degree  of  mis- 
hropy.  "I'm  not  particularly  interested  in 
man  creatures  as  a  mass.  As  a  mass 
y're  totally  stupid— Stone  Age,"  he  says, 
t  the  notion  of  existence  fascinates  him. 
ow  did  life  begin  on  this  planet?"  he 
3  with  wonder.  "Why  is  there  something 
tead  of  nothing?  Why  isn't  it  a  great  big 
:uum?  Why  are  we  here?" 
Shaw  is  like  a  Chinese  puzzle.  As  Alt- 
.n  marvels,  "The  complexity  of  this  man's 
lplicity!"  It's  as  if  his  heart  and  his  intel- 
t  run  on  separate  tracks,  often  at  war, 
Tietimes  corrupting  relationships.  But 
isic,  unfettered  by  intellect,  was  the  area 
ere  his  heart  could  break  free  and  soar, 
isic  historian  Jon  McAuliffe  once  said, 
istening  to  Shaw,  one  can  imagine  that 
e  is  hearing  not  an  instrument  so  much 
an  alien  human  voice." 

/["usic  was  a  way  up  and  out  of  the 
J.  ghetto.  Shaw  was  born  Arthur  Ar- 
iwsky,  in  1910  in  New  York  City,  but  he 
;nt  the  tremulous  early  years  in  Wasp 
■w  Haven.  In  his  1952  memoir,  Tire  Trou- 
■  with  Cinderella,  he  remembered  the  anti- 
mitic  taunts  he  had  been  subjected  to: 
Ve  don't  want  no  goddamn  Christ-killers 
/ing  the  Lord's  Prayer  around  here,  see? 
)  on  home  and  say  your  lousy  kike 
ayers,  and  keep  your  dirty  sheeny  nose 
t  of  other  people's  prayers,  you  hear 
tat  I'm  telling  you?" 

The  scar,  he  wrote,  was  "deep  and  last- 
;."  "From  the  moment  I  realized  that  my 
ing  Jewish  was  something  to  be  jeered  at 
.  I  was  no  longer  the  same  kid  I  had 
en  before." 

Shaw's  epiphany  came  when  he  was  13, 
lying  hooky  and  sneaking  into  a  vaude- 
le  house.  In  his  book,  he  remembered 
ing  "rapt  and  breathless"  as  a  natty  musi- 
in  performed  on  a  "shiny  gold  saxophone. 
sll-sir— that  did  it." 

Born  with  a  musical  ear,  he  bought  a 
:ondhand  saxophone  and  taught  himself 
play  it.  When  he  was  15,  his  break  came, 
part-time  musician  with  the  Johnny  Ca- 
llaro  band,  which  played  at  the  local  Cin- 
rella  Ballroom,  heard  him  and  arranged 
audition  for  him  with  Cavallaro.  Shaw 
d  never  learned  to  read  music  properly, 
d  now  he  was  being  asked  to  sight-read  a 


piece,  which  he  couldn't  do.  "After  the  first 
few  bars  I  was  hopelessly  lost."  Cavallaro's 
eyes  glazed  over,  and  he  turned  away.  But 
Shaw  played  again,  this  time  without  sheet 
music.  He  stopped  the  bandleader  cold. 
"Well,  kid,  I  think  I  could  use  you,"  said 
Cavallaro,  "but  first  you'll  have  to  learn  to 

read Think  you  can  do  it?"  A  month 

later  Shaw  was  back,  and  he  could  read, 
note-perfect.  He  got  the  job. 

By  the  time  Shaw  toured  with  the  Ken- 
tuckians,  a  bush-league  band,  he  was  pass- 
ing himself  off  as  Gentile.  The  name  was 
now  Art  Shaw.  And  when  Cavallaro  an- 
nounced that  he  needed  a  clarinetist,  Shaw 
said  he  could  play  the  instrument— and  then 
quickly  taught  himself.  He  also,  in  short  or- 
der, taught  himself  to  arrange  and  conduct. 

He  paid  his  dues,  moving  from  job  to  job 
in  New  York,  Cleveland,  Los  Angeles,  and 
Chicago.  "In  those  days  the  South  Side  of 
Chicago  was  one  of  the  foremost  jazz  con- 
servatories in  the  world,"  Shaw  wrote.  Gene 
Krupa,  Benny  Goodman,  Louis  Armstrong, 
and  Bix  Beiderbecke  were  all  working  there. 

Meanwhile,  the  parallel  track  to  his  musi- 
cal brilliance  was  emerging:  his  pen- 
chant for  women.  He  was  not  yet  20  when 
he  married  17-year-old  Jane  Cams.  The  mar- 
riage lasted  one  night.  "It  scared  the  hell  out 
of  her,"  Shaw  recalls.  "Her  mother  came 
and  got  her."  The  marriage  was  annulled. 

In  1930,  Shaw  got  his  best  job  to  date, 
with  the  CBS  in-house  radio  dance  band. 
Radio  was  the  training  ground  for  most  of 
the  future  swing  bandleaders,  such  as  the 
Dorsey  brothers  and  Goodman.  For  the  first 
time  Shaw  felt  antagonized  by  the  "whor- 
ing" side  of  the  business.  "I  was  rehearsing 
a  solo  when  the  voice  of  God  came  from 
the  production  room.  'What's  playing  there?' 
said  the  voice.  A  rhythm  section  and  one 
clarinet.'  'The  sponsor's  paying  for  40  men,' 
said  the  voice.  'Fill  it  in.'" 

Shaw,  who  had  quit  high  school,  took  a 
year  off  to  educate  himself  and  to  try  to 
switch  from  music  to  writing.  "I  didn't  have 
the  knowledge  to  be  a  writer,"  he  says.  But 
he  was  learning  fast.  In  1933  he  met  a 
nurse,  Margaret  Allen.  "She  moved  in  the 
first  night  we  knew  each  other."  The  mar- 
riage lasted  a  year  and  a  half. 

He  had  returned  to  freelance  playing  in 
Manhattan  when  he  heard  that  Joe  Hel- 
bock,  owner  of  the  Onyx  Club,  was  organ- 
izing a  concert  featuring  the  new  phenome- 
non, swing,  which  had  begun  taking  off  in 
the  summer  of  1935.  Shaw  pulled  together 
a  few  musician  friends  and  arranged  a 
tune.  Their  performance  eclipsed  those  of 
all  the  other,  better-known  bands,  because 
Shaw  had  done  something  almost  unheard 
of:  he  had  added  a  string  section  to  a  jazz 
band.  It  made  him  stand  out  instantly.  "It 
seemed  as  if  everybody  in  any  way  connect- 


ed with  the  music  business  around  New 
York  had  been  present."  But  Shaw  had 
arranged  only  one  number.  When  the  cheer- 
ing audience  asked  for  more,  he  had  no 
choice:  "I  played  the  same  song  again." 
The  head  of  a  major  dance-band  agency, 
hearing  the  post-concert  buzz,  called  to  ex- 
press interest  in  representing  his  nonexistent 
band.  Shaw  spent  the  next  months  putting 
together  musicians  and  arrangements.  "I 
couldn't  afford  to  get  the  men  I  wanted,  so 
I  was  training  men  out  of  musical  school." 
In  the  summer  of  1936,  Art  Shaw  and 
His  Orchestra,  as  his  group  was  originally 
billed,  opened  at  the  Lexington  Hotel  in 
New  York  City.  He  was  26. 

Shaw  was  on  the  road,  in  Boston,  when 
he  heard  that  Billie  Holiday  was  looking 
for  work.  She'd  had  her  fill  of  singing  with 
Count  Basie's  band.  "She  couldn't  stand 
what  was  going  on  with  the  Mammy  dress- 
ing she  had  to  wear,  so  she  quit,"  Shaw 
says.  He  had  first  heard  her  seven  years  ear- 
lier, when  they  had  both  been  kicking 
around  the  Harlem  clubs.  "One  day  I'm  go- 
ing to  have  a  band,  and  you're  going  to  sing 
for  me,"  he  had  told  her.  "Yeah,  sure,"  she 
had  snapped  back,  "that'll  be  the  day."  He 
had  been  19  at  the  time.  She  had  been  14. 

After  Shaw  finished  his  last  set,  he  got 
into  his  car  and  drove  to  Manhattan,  arriv- 
ing in  the  wee  hours  of  the  morning  at  the 
Harlem  apartment  where  Holiday  lived  with 
her  mother.  "C'mon,  you're  joining  my 
band,"  he  told  her.  "Pack  your  bags."  Holi- 
day told  him  that  he  was  crazy,  that  blacks 
couldn't  work  the  same  venues  as  whites. 
But,  for  Shaw,  the  music  came  first,  and  she 
fit  his  ear,  his  dream,  his  sound.  "She  had  a 
sense  of  what  it  meant  to  sing  music,  not  the 
notes,"  he  says.  "When  she  sang  'Summer- 
time,' it  was  a  different  sound.  It  wasn't  what 
Gershwin  wrote,  but  she  made  it  work." 

Holiday  succumbed,  as  did  so  many  oth- 
ers, to  the  Shaw  steamroller.  She  packed  a 
bag  and  went  to  Boston  with  him.  But  the 
hassles  proved  to  be  worse  than  either  of 
them  could  have  imagined.  They  received 
slurs  at  every  turn,  in  hotels,  restaurants, 
and  clubs.  Nevertheless,  they  were  together 
at  his  most  famous  recording  session,  in 
July  1938.  That's  when  Shaw  lit  a  fire  under 
Cole  Porter's  languid  "Begin  the  Beguine," 
from  the  flop  Broadway  show  Jubilee,  and 
Holiday  recorded  "Any  Old  Time,"  which 
Shaw  had  written  for  her. 

"Begin  the  Beguine"— which  was  the  flip 
side  of  "Indian  Love  Call."  a  swing  version 
of  the  venerable  chestnut  that  was  sup- 
posed to  be  the  big  hit— went  to  the  top  of 
the  charts.  Down  Beat  magazine  named  the 
Artie  Shaw  band  the  top  swing  band  of  the 
year,  surpassing  Benny  Goodman,  who  had 
dominated  swing  music  since  his  August 
1935  appearance  at  the  Palomar.  The  Shaw 


N  E     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


V  ti<  S! 


,  mid  ,  lodman  on  hormones, 

lii   iouI  and  abandon  of  black 

jazz  :  i  mainstrearn  white  audi- 

enC(  Jhaw  bad  winked  OUt  in  Harlem,  as 
he  wrote  in  Ills  autobiography,  "actually  liv- 
ing tlu  life  ol'  a  Negro  musician,  adopting 
.ilues  and  attitudes,  and  accepting 
the  Negro  out-group  point  of  view  not  only 
about  music  but  life  in  general. ...  I  used  to 
\\  ish  I  could  actually  he  a  Negro." 

But  Shaw  couldn't  fight  the  networks,  the 
sponsors,  and  the  record  companies.  Holiday 
said  she  would  prefer  to  go  out  on  her  own 
and  avoid  all  the  pointless  grievances.  "There 
aren't  many  people  who  fought  harder  than 
Artie  against  the  vicious  people  in  the  music 
business  or  the  crummy  side  of  second-class 
citizenship  which  eats  at  the  guts  of  so  many 
musicians,"  Holiday  said  in  her  autobiogra- 
phy. Lady  Sings  the  Blues.  Shaw  was  the  first 
white  bandleader  to  tour  the  South  with  a 
black  singer,  and  she  was  front  and  center  in 
the  Manhattan  performances.  He  risked  his 
professional  neck  when  he  himself  didn't 
have  clout.  "Billie  was  taken  from  a  cult  sing- 
er to  become  a  national  singer,"  he  says 
about  Holiday's  time  with  him.  As  for  Shaw, 
he  went  into  the  stratosphere. 

Soon  Hollywood  was  calling. 

Bandleaders  were  the  newest  novelty  be- 
ing added  to  studio  musicals  by  Fox, 
Paramount,  and  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 
Metro  cast  Shaw  as  himself  in  Dancing  Co- 
ed, a  low-budget  musical  starring  Lana  Turn- 
er, whom  it  was  grooming  to  become  an  A- 
star.  Shaw  remembers  her  then  as  "a  dumb 
little  chick."  He  didn't  think  much  more  of 
the  director  or  the  screenwriter.  "They'd  writ- 
ten me  as  some  sort  of  Rudy  Vallee  band- 
leader. 'Hi-ho,  laddies'  was  the  kind  of  thing 
they  wanted  me  to  say."  Shaw  refused,  and 
did  the  part  with  virtually  no  dialogue. 

Blonde  starlet  Betty  Grable  was  more 
Shaw's  type.  He  had  noticed  her  first  in  a 
cheesecake  spread  in  Life  magazine,  before 
Fox  began  to  move  her  up.  "There  she  was, 
in  a  tank  suit,  practically  wet,  and  you 
looked  at  that  and  you  slavered."  She  still 
heads  the  list  of  women  he  was  involved 
with.  "She  was  probably  the  most  beautiful 
sex  object  I've  ever  known.  Physically  just 
incredible— her  proportions."  Grable  fell  for 
him,  too.  She  left  her  husband,  actor  Jackie 
Coogan,  for  Shaw,  who  didn't  want  to  car- 
ry on  with  a  married  woman.  The  relation- 
ship was  put  on  hold,  however,  when  she 
was  cast  in  Du  Barry  Was  a  Lady,  a  Broad- 
way musical  starring  Ethel  Merman. 

In  that  boom  year  of  1939  in  Los  Ange- 
les, the  movie  industry  was  in  high  gear, 
and  the  town  percolated  with  nightlife  and 
high  living  in  a  string  of  fancy  supper  clubs. 


Motorists  on  the  Sunset  Strip  passing  the 
(  'bateau  Mai  inoiit  on  then  way  to  the  Mo- 
cambo  or  the  Trocadero  were  confronted 
with  a  startling,  mammoth  billboard  that 
changed  each  week.  I  nst  it  was  a  giant  ma- 
chine gun  <>n  a  blank  background  pointed 
straight  at  them,  with  no  text.  A  week  later, 
there  were  four  words  below  the  machine 
gun:  you  asku>  t  or  IT.  The  next  week,  un- 
der that,  was  a  new  line  of  type:  ARTIE  siiaw 
AND  HIS  ORCHESTRA. 

Shaw's  engagement  at  the  Palomar,  the 
new  dance  hall  at  Vermont  and  Third,  which 
took  up  an  entire  city  block,  broke  the  house 
records.  Fire  regulations  limited  attendance 
to  7,000,  but,  for  Artie  Shaw,  9,000  jitterbugs 
squeezed  in.  "You  could  walk  across  the 
place  on  people's  heads,"  he  says.  After 
Shaw  performed  on  the  Boston  Common,  an 
unruly  throng  of  10,000  upended  his  car,  like 
an  overturned  bug.  "In  those  days  we  went 
into  'Begin  the  Beguine'  and  played  it  four 
times  during  the  night,"  saxophonist  Georgie 
Auld  has  recalled.  "They  were  dancing  on 
top  of  the  tables.  It  was  unbelievable.  One 
kid  jumped  off  the  front  balcony  and  broke 
a  leg.  Every  time  we  went  into  the  theme, 
30,  40  kids  would  jump  up  onstage."  Shaw 
was  the  first  real  teen  idol,  preceding  Frank 
Sinatra  by  three  years. 

Shaw  insists  he  never  looked  for  fame. 
"Adulation  can  be  a  bloody  bore,"  he  says. 
During  a  two-week  stint  at  Cafe  Rouge  in 
New  York  in  the  fall  of  1939,  he  finally 
snapped.  Telling  the  papers  that  jitterbugs 
were  "morons  who  would  listen  to  a  wind- 
shield wiper  as  long  as  they  could  dance,"  he 
announced  that  he  was  quitting  the  business. 

The  New  York  Times  reported  "the  Shake- 
spearean sweep  of  Mr.  Shaw's  exodus  ...  [a] 
spectacularly  irreverent  farewell  ...  a  beauti- 
fully incautious  burning  of  all  his  bridges 
behind  him."  The  paper  went  on  to  ask, 
"What  is  it  anyway  about  people  named 
Shaw  that  makes  them  so  stimulating?"— a 
reference  to  another  popular  curmudgeon, 
George  Bernard  Shaw. 

Shaw  fled  Manhattan  and  drove  across 
the  country.  During  a  stop  in  Little  Rock, 
Arkansas,  he  called  Judy  Garland,  whom 
he'd  met  backstage  in  New  York.  "That  ab- 
solutely marvelous  little  face,  with  freckles, 
the  brown  eyes,  the  reddish  hair,  looking  at 
me  with  consummate  tenderness,"  he  has 
said.  She  suggested  he  wait  awhile  before 
returning  to  California  in  order  to  let  things 
cool  down.  "You're  the  mystery  man,"  she 
told  him.  "Everyone  wants  to  know  what's 
happened  to  you."  The  "kid,"  he  would 
shortly  find  out,  was  in  love  with  him. 

After  a  brief  detour  to  Mexico,  Shaw 
headed  back  to  Hollywood,  where  he  palled 
around  with  Garland  and  the  burlesque 
comic  Phil  Silvers,  who  was  just  breaking 
into  films.  "We'd  go  to  parties— whatever 
kids  in  Hollywood  do,"  Shaw  says.  "Judy 


would  come  up  to  the  house,  and  we'd  pi 
records."  lor  Garland's  17th-birthday  par 
in  June  1939,  just  after  The  Wizard  of 
had  wrapped.  Silvers  and  Shaw  cut  a  reco 
as  a  present  for  her.  They  did  an  old  bi 
lesque  routine,  in  which  Shaw  tries  to  tea 
the  comic  to  play  the  clarinet  and  ends 
sounding  like  Silvers. 

One  day  Silvers  took  Shaw  to  a  Met 
soundstage,  where  Lana  Turner  w 
shooting  Two  Girls  on  Broadway  with  Jo 
Blondell  and  George  Murphy.  Shaw  drool 
watching  Turner  "in  a  green  velvet  gown 
tight  on  her  you  could  see  every  pore,  as 
she  were  born  in  that  dress  and  grew  up 
it."  They  made  a  date,  and  that  same  nig 
they  eloped,  although  Turner  was  engag 
to  the  powerful  entertainment  attorney  Gi 
Bautzer,  and  Shaw  was  still  unofficially 
gaged  to  marry  Betty  Grable. 

The  next  morning  the  news  was  all  o\ 
the  radio  and  the  papers.  Grable,  who  was 
nally  getting  her  big  break  as  second  lead 
Ethel  Merman,  was  immediately  on  t 
phone,  screaming  at  Silvers.  Garland's  mo 
er  called  Shaw,  furious  at  him  for  misleadi 
Judy.  "I  never  touched  your  daughter.  I  ne\ 
had  anything  to  do  with  her,"  he  says  he  t( 
her.  "She  was  like  a  sister— it  would  ha 
been  incestuous,"  he  says.  "Plus,  she  was 
kid.  It  would  have  been  San  Quentin  time. 

His  first  night  with  Turner  was  surreal: 
was,  like,  a  very  strange  feeling,  going  to  b 
with  a  woman  who's  now  your  wife,  and  y 
don't  know  her.  But  she  was  gorgeous, 
the  rites  proceeded.  It  was  not  much,  sexu 
ly.  Later  it  became  pretty  heated." 

Aside  from  physical  magnetism,  Turr 
and  Shaw  had  little  in  common.  Turr 
found  her  new  husband  impatient  and  i 
perious.  "When  we  argued— which  was 
ten— he  would  twist  the  discussion  into 
philosophical  harangue  from  which  I  gem 
ally  retreated  in  tears,"  she  wrote  in  her 
tobiography,  Lana:  Tire  Lady,  the  Leget 
the  Truth.  "Lana  didn't  have  much  of 
brain,"  counters  Shaw,  though  he  was 
bitually  attracted  to  sensual  women  w 
were  not  intellectually  inclined.  "She  w 
not  somebody  you  could  sit  down  with  a 
have  a  protracted  conversation  about  at 
thing  except  her  and  her  last  picture." 

Turner's  abortion  of  Shaw's  baby  was  t 
final  nail  in  the  coffin  of  their  relationsh 
Turner  wrote  that  she  called  him  after  th 
had  separated,  when  she  discovered  she  w 
pregnant,  hoping  for  a  rapprochement, 
response:  "So  what?"  Turner  was  crushe 
"What  do  you  mean,  'So  what?'  My  Gc 
it's  your  baby."  And  then  she  recalled  t 
clincher:  Shaw  asked,  "How  do  I  kn( 
that?"  Turner  wrote:  "I  slammed  down  t 
phone  and  burst  into  tears.  And  that  for 
was  the  end  of  Artie  Shaw."  Shaw  dismiss 
her  version  as  fiction,  along  with  her  whe 


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\rlic  Shaw 


know  whal  she's  talking 

aboul     .  irnebod)  wrote  bei  book  for  her, 

wallow  hei  own  publicity 

it,"  he  states  flatlj   I  [e  found 

oul     '"in  the  abortion  after  the  fact,  and 

Metro  mogul  Louis  B.  Mayer,  who 

him  one  night  after  maneuvering 

off  to  a  screening  so  that  he  could 

urge  Shaw   to  practice  birth  control.  He 

wanted  to  control  his  asset.  Shaw  says,  "I 

told  him  that  1  didn't  know  if  we'd  be  able 

to  follow  the  Catholic  rhythm  method." 

Shaw  put  together  a  new  band,  composed 
of  musicians  working  at  the  major  stu- 
dios, and  in  March  1940  he  recorded  "Fren- 
esi,"  his  second  blockbuster,  a  swing  version 
of  a  Latin  tune  he'd  heard  in  Mexico.  A  few 
months  later  he  assembled  a  completely 
different  band  and  recorded  "Star  Dust." 
Shaw's  soaring,  haunting  solo  is  considered 
a  benchmark  for  the  instrument,  and  the 
recording  became  the  third  of  his  major  hits. 
"It's  the  greatest  clarinet  solo  of  all  time," 
said  clarinetist  Buddy  DeFranco. 

Paramount  Pictures  signed  Shaw  for  his 
second  movie,  a  musical  starring  John  Gar- 
field, who  would  play  a  trumpeter  and 
front  the  band  while  Shaw  performed  on 
the  clarinet.  But  Garfield  was  replaced  by 
Fred  Astaire,  and  the  part  metamorphosed 
into  that  of  a  dancing  conductor.  "It  was 
ridiculous,"  says  Shaw.  Second  Chorus  (1940) 
was  Astaire's  least  successful  musical  and 
Shaw's  final  film. 

By  this  time  Shaw  had  joined  a  small  fra- 
ternity of  individuals  that  included  Howard 
Hughes  and  Errol  Flynn,  who  were  objects 
of  special  attention  for  some  of  Hollywood's 
most  powerful  actresses.  Shaw  explains: 
"Look,  a  certain  type  of  woman  goes  to  a 
performance,  and  there's  this  guy  on  the 
stage— it's  like  seeing  a  piece  of  jewelry  on  a 
piece  of  blue  velvet  cloth,  gleaming.  It's  at- 
tractive, it's  meant  to  be  attractive.  There  is  a 
hell  of  a  lot  of  sex  to  showbiz.  Those  women 
were  like  men.  They  went  after  what  they 
wanted.  I  found  it  interesting.  I  suddenly 
was  the  woman.  I  was  being  courted."  One 
of  these  women,  Shaw  says,  was  Joan  Craw- 
ford. "I  was  working  at  the  Palomar,  and  a 
message  came  back  to  my  manager.  'Joan 
Crawford  would  like  to  meet  you.'  She  would 
have  her  chauffeur  come  pick  me  up.  So 
after  the  gig  the  chauffeur  showed  up  and 
drove  me  there.  And  I  met  her.  Quote,  met 
her."  Did  they  have  sex?  "Yeah.  She  wanted 
that.  She  was  a  very  sexual  woman." 

Lena  Home,  before  her  star  buildup  at 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,  recorded  two  songs 
with  Shaw's  band— "Love  Me  a  Little  Little" 
and  "Don't  Take  Your  Love  from  Me"— and 
also  became  involved  with  the  musician. 

VANITY     FAIR 


She  wanted  us  to  get  married."  says  Shaw. 
"I  couldn't  have  done  that  She  would  have 
been  finished  and  I  would  have  been  fin- 
ished. She  was  black  and  I  was  white.  And 
the  world  wouldn't  accept  it  at  that  tune." 

Instead,  Shaw  married  hli/abeth  Kern, 
the  daughter  of  composer  Jerome  Kern, 
and  they  had  a  son,  Steven. 

In  April  1942,  Shaw  enlisted  in  the  navy. 
He  disliked  military  life,  even  though  his 
job  was  to  entertain  the  troops  in  the  Pacif- 
ic, as  Glenn  Miller  was  entertaining  them 
on  the  European  front.  "Can  I  shake  the 
hand  that  held  Lana  Turner's  tit?"  was  the 
kind  of  crass  request  that  made  Shaw  go 
ballistic.  "We  were  a  horrible  excuse  for  a 
military  band,  in  spite  of  the  good  musi- 
cians," trumpeter  Max  Kaminsky  has  said. 
Being  in  the  midst  of  active  warfare  was 
"harrowing,"  according  to  Shaw,  who  per- 
formed on  Guadalcanal,  which  was  being 
bombarded  by  the  Japanese. 

One  rare  high  point  was  a  performance 
on  the  aircraft  carrier  Saratoga.  "Since  it 
was  night,  the  men  were  gathered  on  the 
lower  deck,  and  our  entrance  alone  sent 
them  off  into  an  uproar,"  Kaminsky  has  re- 
called. "We  set  up  the  bandstand  on  the 
huge  aircraft  elevator  and  began  playing  our 
theme  song  'Nightmare'  as  we  descended 
slowly  into  the  midst  of  the  wildly  cheering 
men.  It  was  like  being  back  at  the  Para- 
mount again." 

When  Shaw  returned  to  the  States,  the 
newspapers  captured  him,  on  his  knees  at 
the  dock,  kissing  the  pavement.  The  music 
he  put  together  for  his  first  postwar  band 
was  the  purest  jazz  of  his  career.  He  record- 
ed "Ac-cent-tchu-ate  the  Positive,"  "Love 
Walked  In,"  and  "Summertime."  Now  a  jazz 
classic,  "Summertime"  was  then  considered 
too  arrhythmic  to  dance  to.  "It  was  a  com- 
plex, sophisticated  piece  of  music,"  says 
Shaw.  "One  of  the  reasons  I  liked  it  was  the 
contrast  between  the  melody,  the  growly  solo, 
against  a  very  complicated  background." 

The  growing  Shaw  craze  swept  Ava  Gard- 
ner off  her  feet.  In  her  memoir,  Ava:  My 
Story,  she  remembered  the  first  time  she  laid 
eyes  on  him:  "Oh,  my  God,  I  thought,  what 
a  beautiful  man!"  They  married  in  the  fall 
of  1945,  but  soon  the  familiar  fault  lines 
emerged.  Initially  attracted  to  her  beauty,  he 
tried  to  polish  the  uneducated  North  Caroli- 
na girl.  Echoing  Turner,  Gardner  later  wrote, 
"The  increasingly  hostile  way  that  he  put 
me  down  both  at  home  and  at  parties  wore 
my  nerves  to  shreds."  Still,  she  said  Shaw 
"taught  me  to  study,  to  think,  to  read." 

He  made  his  biggest  impact  on  her  ca- 
reer, strong-arming  Louis  B.  Mayer  into 
raising  her  out  of  the  starlet  category.  After 
a  late  night  of  partying,  Gardner  com- 
plained one  morning  about  bags  under  her 


a 


eyes  Shaw  told  her  to  sleep  in.  "It's  all  b 
shit.  You're  only  getting  80,  90  dollar; 
week.  I'll  lake  care  of  it."  Then  the  pht 
calls  started,  first  from  Casting.  "Whet 
our  little  girl?"  Shaw  said  she  was  sleepi 
"Then  it  was  somebody  like  [producer] 
thur  Freed,"  Shaw  remembers.  "Whei 
our  little  girl?"  Finally  Eddie  Mannix,  M 
er's  right-hand  man,  called.  Shaw  told  hi 
"Eddie,  it's  not  worth  it.  Eighty  bucks 
what  I  pay  a  waiter.  She's  out  there, 
she's  going  to  go  out  to  the  beach 
you're  going  to  show  her  at  the  beach  w 
a  beach  ball,  and  it's  going  to  say,  V 
Gardner,  starlet,  at  Metro-Goldwyn-May 
That's  why  she's  not  coming  in."  Shaw  hi 
up.  The  last  call  was  from  Mayer,  ask 
for  a  meeting  with  Shaw. 

In  Mayer's  Culver  City  office,  the  t 
men  played  cat  and  mouse.  Shaw  said,  "1* 
Mayer,  80  or  100  dollars  a  week  is  ha: 
worth  your  time  or  my  time.  How  mi 
would  you  have  to  pay  her  to  respect  he. 
Mayer  paused,  recalls  Shaw.  "That  is 
question  that  he  had  not  heard  before,  a 
I  could  see  the  wheels  start  clicking.  He 
fers  1,000. 1  say,  'You  wouldn't  really  resp 
her  for  1,000.  Gable  gets  five,  Garbo  g 
five.'  Then  Mayer  says,  'I  tell  you,  for  1,5 
I  would  have  to  respect  her.  Forty  we< 
times  1,500  is  60,000.  The  East  Co 
would  want  to  know  why  I'm  giving  t 
unknown  girl  that.'" 

Gardner  got  the  raise,  but  soon  after 
contract  was  drawn  up  the  couple  split. 

In  1946,  in  a  departure  from  his  usual  gk 
our  queen,  Shaw  married  Kathleen  W 
sor,  author  of  the  infamously  risque  no 
Forever  Amber.  The  brief,  disastrous  uni 
played  out  with  deeper  impact  than  any 
the  previous  marriages.  "I  have  a  medi 
term  for  her,"  Shaw  says  bitterly.  "She  wa 
cunt."  Winsor,  he  says,  precipitated  his  si 
poena  to  appear  before  the  House  I 
American  Activities  Committee  (huac).  "5 
called  me  a  Communist  in  public.  Her 
peal  for  divorce  contained,  among  otl 
things,  that  I  kept  her  up  at  night  mak 
her  read  Marx  and  Engels  and  Lenin  u: 
she  could  pass  a  test."  (Winsor  could  not 
reached  for  comment.) 

Artie  Shaw  and  His  Orchestra  contini 
the  shift  from  swing  to  jazz,  record 
"What  Is  This  Thing  Called  Love?' 
"I've  Got  the  Sun  in  the  Morning."  A 
then  Shaw  took  off  on  another  tange 
classical  music.  He  stopped  playing  jazz 
an  entire  year,  performing  the  work 
Mozart  and  other  serious  composers 
stead.  Shaw  began  to  see  the  whole  sp 
trum  of  the  arts  as  his  arena.  "People  ; 
me,  'Who  did  you  study  with?'  And  I  s 
'As  much  Monet  as  I  did  the  next  clari 
player.'"  He  appeared  at  Carnegie  Hall  % 
a  guest  soloist  with  the  National  Yo 


7: 


phony  and  recorded  works  by  Debussy, 
■  and  Shostakovich.  With  characteris- 
ndifference  to  his  audience,  when  he 

booked  as  the  opening  attraction  at 

City,  the  new  Manhattan  jazz  club, 
*  conducted  a  40-piece  orchestra  in 

ussy  and  Prokofiev. 

lis  disconnect  from  audiences  widened. 

949,  when  he  returned  to  pop  music, 
iut  together  a  group  which  he  maintains 

"the  best  of  all  my  bands."  It  was  also, 
;ays,  "the  biggest  flop"  he  ever  had. 
e  instruments  came  in,  and  the  people 
t  out,"  he  recalls,  holding  his  nose  to 
;ate  the  audience's  response.  "My  whole 
id  had  become  much  more  pure  and 
:h  more  refined.  My  vibrato  was  not  so 
:h  now  a  wave  as  a  ripple."  He  updated 
ions  of  earlier  hits  such  as  "Star  Dust" 

"Frenesi."  "I  did  much  more  with 
nesi.'  It  became  more  complex.  I  had 
e  to  say."  But  audiences  didn't  want 

from  Shaw.  After  one  month  on  the 
i,  he  pulled  the  plug.  "I  called  my 
it.  I  said,  'Break  it  up.'" 
haw  then  orchestrated  another  passive- 
ressive  prank.  He  put  together  a  bogus 
d.  "If  they  hated  the  best  band  I  could 

in  my  own  sardonic  way  I  thought  to 
elf,  What  would  happen  if  I  got  the 
st  band  you  ever  heard?  I  called  a  guy 
>  didn't  know  anything  about  the  band 
iness,  a  viper.  'Hey,  man,  whatya  gonna 
,'"  Shaw  says  in  dialect,  then  makes 
rette-dragging  sounds.  "He  was  on  man- 
ia all  the  time.  I  said,  'I  want  14  men 
)  can  play  stock  arrangements.'  I  sent 

around  to  all  the  publishers  to  get  the 
;est  hits,  the  10  Variety  and  Billboard 
.  Tunes  like  'Blue  Tango,'  'Whoop-Dee 
a!,'  'If  I  Knew  You  Were  Comin'  I'd've 
:ed  a  Cake.'  That  kind  of  crap.  Stuff  I'd 
sr  looked  at."  Shaw  knew  what  the  reac- 
.  would  be:  "The  audience  loved  it." 
io  once  again  he  quit  the  business. 

1950  he  bought  a  dairy  farm  in  rural 
Jew  York.  Asked  by  jazz  author  Leonard 
ther  what  interested  him,  if  it  wasn't  mu- 

Shaw  said,  "Cows."  Actually,  farming 

merely  the  financial  underpinning  for 
it  he  had  wanted  to  do  since  childhood: 
I  a  book.  In  15  months  Shaw  wrote  Tlie 
ible  with  Cinderella,  which  was  published 
Farrar,  Straus  and  Young  to  respectable, 
lixed,  reviews.  Tlie  New  Yorker  called  him 

excellent  writer,"  while  pointing  out  his 
irked  tendency  to  babble."  Shaw  in  his 
noir  courageously  revealed  his  self-hatred, 
dysfunctional  childhood,  his  self-directed 
i-Semitism,  and  his  psychoanalysis. 
>haw  describes  his  appearance  before 
I  in  1953  as  one  of  defiance  and  righ- 
is  indignation.  "They  asked,  'Didn't  you 
i  the  World  Peace  Congress?'  I  said, 
ih,  there's  nothing  wrong  with  that.  I  went 


to  a  war.  I  don't  want  to  see  another  war.' 
'Well,  didn't  you  know  it  was  a  Communist- 
front  organization?'  I  said,  'Well,  show  me  a 
Republican-front  one.  I'll  go  there.'" 

Others  say  that  Shaw,  for  once,  lost  his 
characteristic  nerve  and  caved  in.  "He  didn't 
just  stand  up  and  say,  'You  guys  are  full  of 
shit,'"  says  historian  Lewis  A.  Erenberg,  re- 
ferring to  Shaw's  traditional  in-your-face 
style.  Victor  Navasky,  publisher  and  editorial 
director  of  The  Nation,  adds:  "He  admitted, 
'I  was  a  dupe.'"  In  Navasky's  seminal 
book  on  the  blacklist.  Naming  Names,  pub- 
lished in  1980,  he  writes  that  an  abject  Shaw 
fervently  promised  that  "he  would  not  sign 
anything  [of  a  possibly  incriminating  nature] 
'unless  I  had  the  advice  of  seven  lawyers 
and  the  granting  of  permission  or  clearance 
by  this  Committee.'"  Erenberg  concludes, 
"For  a  guy  that  smart  to  take  an  I-was-stupid 

defense  really  must  have  hurt I  think  he 

signed  things— he  believed  in  a  better  world— 
and  he  supported  things.  As  early  as  1931, 
for  example,  I  found  a  letter  of  his  in  the 
Daily  Worker  condemning  jazz  as  decadent, 
which  was  also  a  Communist  position  at  the 
time.  How  many  bandleaders  do  you  know 
who  read  the  Daily  WorkerV 

Soon  Shaw  felt  pressure  from  another  di- 
rection. The  I.R.S.  was  hounding  him  for 
$80,000  it  claimed  he  owed  in  back  taxes. 
"At  that  stage  I  was  utterly  disillusioned 
with  America.  I  thought  it  was  one  of  the 
most  awful  countries  on  earth,"  he  says.  "I 
lost  the  farm  because  I  couldn't  afford  to 
pay  the  I.R.S.  I  was  apparently  on  Nixon's 
enemies  list.  I  didn't  know  that.  But  that's 
what  happened.  They  were  going  to  get  me 
one  way  or  another." 

By  1954  the  big-band  era  was  finished, 
Elvis  Presley  had  recorded  his  first  single, 
and  Shaw  was  feeling  like  a  misfit.  His  last 
musical  incarnation,  the  Gramercy  Five 
band,  was  compact  and  bop.  "I  hadn't 
played  in  about  a  year  and  a  half.  But  I'd 
been  listening  to  what  was  going  on,  and  I 
wanted  modern  players.  Men  who  were 
modern,  that's  the  only  word  for  it.  I  put 
this  group  together.  It  was  the  best  playing 
I  ever  did."  But  no  label  would  record  the 
band.  "Everybody  said  it  was  the  best 
small  group  they'd  ever  heard,  but  there 
was  no  place  for  that,"  says  Shaw.  "So  I 
recorded  them  myself.  I  kept  the  records 
on  dry  ice  for  about  40  years." 

That  was  the  end.  "I  sold  the  cattle  and 
the  farm,  said  'Good-bye,  America,'  and 
went  away." 

Shaw  moved  to  Spain  and,  outside  rural 
Bagur,  on  the  Costa  Brava,  built  a  house 
he  had  designed.  He  studied  fishing  and  as- 
tronomy and  continued  writing,  producing 
a  well-received  volume  of  short  stories,  / 
Low  You,  I  Hate  You,  Drop  Dead!  On  a  trip 
to  Paris  he  met  Evelyn  Keyes,  the  Columbia 


actress  whose  most  famous  role  was  at 
MGM  as  Scarlett  O'Hara's  younger  sister  in 
Gone  with  the  Wind.  Fed  up  with  show  busi- 
ness and  divorced  from  director  John  Hus- 
ton, she  had  relocated  to  France.  She  moved 
to  Spain  and  married  Shaw  in  1957. 

Keyes  has  written  that  she  heard  him 
play  the  clarinet  only  once.  She  was  outside 
and  heard  music  coming  from  the  house. 
"All  he  did  was  play  some  scales.  Up  and 
down.  Over  and  over,"  she  recalled.  "They 
were  some  of  the  sweetest  sounds  I  had 
ever  heard." 

Shaw's  exile  lasted  five  years.  "I'm  not 
well  suited  to  be  an  expatriate.  People  like 
Hemingway,  who  could  live  overseas  and 
spend  their  lives  there,  sort  of  lose  their 
identity.  I  couldn't  do  that."  He  and  Keyes 
moved  to  suburban  Connecticut,  where 
Shaw  took  up  marksmanship.  He  opened 
a  rifle  range,  manufactured  guns,  and  won 
awards  in  competitions.  Film  distribution 
also  caught  his  interest.  His  first  release, 
Seance  on  a  Wet  Afternoon,  starring  Kim 
Stanley,  was  a  critical  success  in  1964. 

The  California  years,  covering  the  last 
quarter-century,  have  essentially  been  de- 
voted to  participating  in  retrospectives  such 
as  the  Smithsonian  Jazz  Masterworks,  giving 
university  lectures,  overseeing  his  vast  music 
catalogue  and  reissues— more  than  1,000  re- 
cordings—and writing.  In  1989  a  compila- 
tion of  short  stories  dating  back  to  the  1940s, 
along  with  new  work,  was  published.  In 
1992,  a  trade  paperback  of  Die  Trouble  with 
Cinderella  was  published.  He  has  just  com- 
pleted his  epic  memoir  and  is  working  on 
the  edit.  In  this  autobiographical  work  he 
has  created  a  fictional  alter  ego  named  Albie 
Snow.  "I  can  really  tell  the  truth  with  this 
one,"  Shaw  declares.  "And  I  have." 

Others  are  waiting  their  turn  to  do  the 
same.  Gene  Lees  won't  give  details  about  his 
animus  toward  Shaw,  saying  only,  "The  day 
he  dies,  I  will  write  the  true  story."  Sammy 
Cahn  wrote  enigmatically  about  his  rancor 
toward  Shaw.  "[Cahn's]  lawyer  made  him  cut 
half  of  that  chapter  away,"  says  Lees.  "He's 
super-litigious,  almost  maniacally  so." 

"Artie  sues  everybody,"  says  his  friend 
Fred  Hall.  "He  sues  RCA  every  few  years." 
Shaw  is  also  tied  up  in  court  proceedings 
with  Canadian  producer  Brigitte  Berman, 
who  won  an  Oscar  for  Time  Is  All  You've 
Got,  a  reverential  documentary  about  Shaw. 
He  lost  the  Canadian  suit.  "That  was  a  kan- 
garoo court,"  he  scoffs.  He  expects  to  win 
the  American  suit.  He  says  he's  entitled  to  a 
piece  of  the  profits.  "I  have  the  rights  to  the 
music— she  can't  put  it  out."  says  Shaw. 
"She  doesn't  want  to  share  anything  with 
me."  (Berman  did  not  return  calls  for  this 
article.)  Shaw  has  also  filed  lawsuits  again* 
producers  who  employ  his  music  in  tributes. 
"We're  still  in  litigation.  I  can't  say  a  word 


■4  E     19  9  9 


SI  ia\\ 


hi  ej  foe  <  fraydon.  "I 

ij  what  I  have  to  saj  is  print- 
able      lys  clarinetist  Abe  Most.  "1  had  to 
.1  deposition.  He  didn't 
lybodj  usurping  Ins  name  by  saying, 
to  \iik-  Shaw.'  I  thought  in  my 
i  was  a  tribute  to  him." 

People  closest  to  Shaw  have  needed 
Strong  hides.  "The  truth  is.  Artie  is  so 
self-absorbed  there  isn't  a  hell  of  a  lot  of 
room  for  anyone  else,"  says  1  lall.  Shaw  has 
been  absent  from  the  life  of  Jonathan,  his 
son  by  actress  Doris  Dowling,  his  seventh 
wile.  "As  a  father,  he  doesn't  exist  tor  me.  I 
consider  him  a  friendly  acquaintance."  says 
Jonathan,  an  artist  in  New  York.  "I  don't 
want  to  sling  mud.  He's  a  great  man.  I 
think  he's  fucked  up  a  lot. . . .  I'm  sure  he 
suffers  lor  it,  more  than  anything  he's  inflict- 
ed on  others,  because  he  has  to  live  with  it." 

Evelyn  Keyes,  the  wife  whose  marriage  to 
Shaw  lasted  longest  and  has  been  followed 
by  intermittent  periods  of  closeness  and  es- 
trangement since  their  divorce,  is  still  con- 
fused and  pained  by  him.  She  devoted  80 
pages  to  him  in  her  1977  memoir,  Scarlett 
O'Hara's  Younger  Sister.  At  a  film  festival 
shortly  after  she  and  Shaw  had  had  a 
blowup,  she  recalls,  "someone  stood  up  and 
said,  'I  heard  Artie  Shaw  speak,  and  he  said 
the  marriage  to  you  was  the  best  of  all.'  Well, 
for  Christ's  sake,  why  couldn't  he  have  told 
me  that?  That  was  within  a  month  of  when 
he  called  and  blasted  our  time  together." 

Today,  Shaw  admits,  "I've  never  pretend- 
ed that  I'm  the  stuff  of  husbands.  I'm  a 
very,  very  tough  guy  to  live  with." 

Steve  Banks,  a  Los  Angeles  photographer 
who  did  some  photo  sessions  with  Shaw  in 
recent  years,  says,  "Artie  blows  kind  of  hot 
and  cold.  Sometimes  he  knew  me,  sometimes 
he  didn't.  He  knew  me,  he  didn't  know  me." 

Those  who  have  fared  best  with  Shaw, 
and  longest,  defer  to  him  as  a  genuinely  su- 
perior being.  Sophia  Rosoff,  closer  than 
ever  to  Shaw  after  50  years,  describes  the 
dynamics  between  them:  "I  am  a  born 
learner  and  Artie  is  a  born  teacher."  Gene 
Beecher,  who  has  known  Shaw  for  75 
years,  says  his  oldest  friend  "always  tells  me 
what  to  do,  and  he's  always  right." 

But,  for  most  other  people,  Shaw  re- 
mains a  mass  of  contradictions.  "The  guy 
baffles  me.  The  lyricism  of  his  art  com- 
pared with  the  brutality  in  his  attitudes  is 
>mething  that  I  cannot  understand,"  says 
who  once  wrote  glowingly  of  Shaw  in 
his  classic  jazz  book  Meet  Me  at  Jim  & 
Andy's.  And  when  he's  in  the  Artie  Shaw 
mood,  all  sweetness  and  seeming  consider- 
ation, you  always  wonder  if  the  other  was 
false."    Lees,    like    many   former   friends, 


laments  the  dissolution  ol  what  had  been  a 

special  relationship,  "I  have  never  under- 
stood the  man.  I  thought  I  did,  Had  he 
been  all  I  thought  he  was,  he  would  have 
been  one  of  the  men  I've  loved  most  in  my 
life,  But  he  destroyed  his  friendship  with 
me,  .\i^\  it  was  a  damned  close  friendship." 

Writer  and  longtime  friend  Frederic 
Morton,  who  met  Shaw  shortly  after 
reviewing  The  Trouble  with  ( inderella  m 
1952,  says,  "I  never  saw  him  being  mali- 
cious. Yes,  he  can  be  insensitive,  in  a  sense 
that  he  is  so  caught  up  in  what  he  is  doing, 
and  so  intense  about  what  he  is  doing,  that 
he  doesn't  realize  that  the  other  person 
may  have  gotten  an  overdose." 

Erenberg,  a  Loyola  University  of  Chica- 
go professor  who  has  studied  the  leading 
figures  of  the  swing-band  era,  says  of  Shaw, 
"He  had  a  gut  with  an  unsettled  sense  of 
identity. ...  He  was  searching  for  some- 
thing. He  changed  bands,  concepts,  and  it 
was  the  same  way  with  women." 

Morton  remembers  a  meeting  at  the 
Drake  hotel  in  New  York  when  the  two 
Shaws  intersected.  "We  had  lunch,  talking 
about  intellectual  things— the  relationship 
between  theology  and  philosophy— and  con- 
tinued it  in  his  room,  just  surrounded  by  all 
these  books.  He  escorts  me  to  the  elevator. 
It  opens,  and  there's  Paulette  Goddard.  She 
says,  'Darling.'  He  says,  'Darling.'  All  of  a 
sudden  he  is  in  the  Hollywood  universe— 
the  body  gestures,  the  big-time  glamour  boy 
meeting  the  glamour  girl— switching  in  just 
one  second.  I  was  struck  by  how  he  inhab- 
its worlds  that  are  completely  disparate,  that 
have  nothing  to  do  with  each  other." 

Most  people  can't  get  over  Shaw's  quit- 
ting the  music  business,  especially  when  his 
writing  could  never  compete  with  his  mu- 
sic. Composer  Bob  Florence  says  that  an 
unreceptive  music  business  can't  be  the 
whole  story.  "He  spends  a  lot  of  time  talk- 
ing about  why  he  quit  the  music  business— 
because  he  wanted  to  progress  and  nobody 
would  let  him,  a  victim  of  success I  of- 
ten wonder  why  he  dwells  on  it.  That  was 
in  1954,  and  here  it  is  1999,  and  he's  still 
complaining  about  it." 

Through  it  all,  Shaw  was  always  in 
search  of  an  outlet,  constantly  shifting,  con- 
stantly exploring,  unafraid  to  change  course. 
"He  welcomes  every  experience  as  if  it 
were  for  a  first  time,  with  an  innocence  and 
no  dead  weight,  and  can  examine  each  ex- 
perience openly,"  says  Rosoff.  "That  com- 
plete openness  allowed  him  to  extend  the 
range  of  the  clarinet  as  no  one  had  before, 
because  of  his  freedom  to  explore." 

Scholars  say  that  he  changed  music. 
Erenberg  explains:  "The  way  he  came 
to  success  was  by  swinging  the  American 
songbook.  He  took  the  best  standards  and 


I  in  Can  Alley  tunes  and  he  gave  them  c 
sic  form  'Begin  the  Beguine.'  Star  I)i 
'Deep  Purple.'  I  think  he  really  swi 
them.  He  is  looking  lor  his  sources  wit 
American  pop  culture,  and  he  raises  th 
to  a  higher  level 

The  Smithsonian  Jazz  Masterworks 
chestra  has  staged  several  tributes  to  A 
Shaw  in  recent  years.  Musical  and  arti 
director  David  Baker  sees  Shaw  as  "soi 
body  who  did  so  much  to  shape  the  lut 
direction  of  jazz. . . .  Not  only  was  he  sta 
ing  astride  like  a  colossus,  he  had  the 
sion  to  see  directions  and  point  directioi 
says  Baker.  "With  Glenn  Miller  you 
the  formula,  and  I  don't  mean  to  denigi 
him.  But  then  you  turn  to  somebody 
Artie  Shaw  and  find  out  that  every  set 
piece  is  almost  one  of  a  kind.  And 
rangements  like  'Summertime'  and  'M 
with  the  Flaccid  Air,'  which  are  so. 
ahead  of  their  time." 

was  a  Benny  Goodman  fan  unt 
heard  Artie  Shaw,  and  that  was  it,"  m 
cian  Jerome  Richardson  has  said.  "He  w 
to  places  on  the  clarinet  that  no  one  I 
ever  been  before.  He  would  get  up  to 
and  C's  and  make  not  notes  but  mu 
melodies." 

Keyes  has  written  of  Shaw:  "Those  til 
I'd  observed  him  listening  to  music 
had  been  as  if  he  stepped  inside  the  mu 
or  it  into  him.  They,  he  and  the  sound, 
come  one,  off"  in  a  land  of  their  own." 

The  1,900-seat  Wilshire  Theatre  was  i 
out  on  October  24,  in  spite  of  the 
that  the  bulk  of  the  advertising  had  been 
the  local  public  jazz  station.  Shaw  arrive* 
four  in  the  afternoon  and  rehearsed  the 
contract  musicians— mostly  baby-boome 
until  seven.  He  had  had  two  afternoon! 
rehearsal  earlier  in  the  week.  Shaw  gan 
tried  to  get  the  musicians  to  approxir 
the  sound  of  his  polished  bands  in  the  p 
interrupting  them,  coaxing  them,  tell 
them,  "No,  no,  wait  until  the  fourth  bar 
fore  you  come  in."  That  night  the  audie 
went  crazy,  but  Shaw  wasn't  satisfied. 

At  his  home  several  days  later  he  I   |li 
me,  "Two  afternoons  isn't  enough  to 
hearse."  Asked  if  he  liked  the  band, 
scoffs,  "Naah!"  The  tone  signifies:  Are 
kidding?  Shaw  knows  it  really  doesn't  n 
ter.  "The  jury's  in  on  me,"  he  says. 

He  is  sitting  on  a  weathered  couch  in 
favorite  room,  his  attic  office,  surroum 
by  books,  reproductions  of  works  by 
master  painters,  an  easel  with  a  paini 
that  he  has  been  working  on.  There  I 
stacks  of  albums  and  CDs,  both  his  <Jj 
and  the  music  he  tries  to  keep  up  with 
a  corner  is  the  new  computer  on  which 
editing  down  his  big  book. 

So  why  did  he  come  back?  "They  asl 
me,"  he  answers.  A  typical  Shaw  resporj 


VANITY     FAIR 


Credits 


"He  hates  the  business,  but  he  can't  stay 
ay  from  the  business,"  says  Peter  Levin- 
i,  a  friend  who  was  Shaw's  publicist  for 
tny  years.  "That's  been  the  enigma  of  his 
."  lied  Hall  suggests,  "Look,  you  gotta 
derstand,  Artie  today  shies  away  from 
blicity.  He  says.  But  the  truth  is,  I  believe, 
can't  help  but  like  remaining  a  figure  to 
talked  about,  because  he  came  from 
where,  out  of  a  nothing  background,  and 
ide  a  very  big  impression  on  the  world 
ich  lasts  till  today." 

What  would  Shaw  like  as  his  epitaph? 
"'Go  away,'"  he  says,  and  laughs.  "It's 
:e,"  he  insists.  But  it  sounds  like  bluster, 
hat  was  his  old  epitaph?  "'He  did  the 
st  he  could  with  the  material  at  hand.' 
it  I  looked  at  it,  and  it  seemed  too  long. 
;aid,  'Let's  get  something  elegant.'  So  I 
jrtened  it  to  'Go  away.'" 
The  coming  book  may  give  new  clues 
out  Shaw.  He  says  it's  about  "a  guy  who 
t  into  the  music  business  and  wanted  to 
ow  about  literature  and  about  painting 
d  about  poetry  and  wanted  to  know 
out  everything." 

But  Shaw  still  has  music  in  his  blood, 
hear  notes  in  my  head.  I'm  doing  it 
;ht  now."  He  pauses.  "Hearing  music. 
n  hearing  notes,  and  my  fingers  are  play- 
l  them.  Sometimes  it  goes  on  all  the 
ne.  I  can't  do  anything  about  it.  Been 
at  way  for  years  and  years  and  years, 
■er  since  I  quit." 

There  are  a  thousand  and  one  anec- 
>tes  about  Shaw.  One  that  Frederic  Mor- 
n  tells  seems  to  capture  the  man's  real 
irit.  "We  were  traveling  in  Europe.  We 
rived  in  Vienna  and  checked  in  at  the 
>tel.  It  was  6:45.  We'd  settled  in  the 
om,  but  Artie  had  found  out  about  the 
ost  famous  patisserie,  Demel's,  which 
ed  to  be  for  centuries  the  patisserie  to 
e  Hapsburgs.  It  closed  at  6:30  sharp,  but 
i  was  so  intent  on  getting  those  cakes,  he 
auldn't  accept  that.  You've  got  to  remem- 
:r,  Artie's  got  a  real  sweet  tooth.  He 
shed  down,  and  the  fancy  wrought-iron 
ite  was  closed.  And  Artie  fell  on  his  knees 
id  began  to  rattle  the  bars  of  the  gate  so 
)werfully  that  one  of  the  janitors  ran  out 
see  what  was  the  matter.  Don't  forget, 
is  is  Vienna,  which  is  so  tradition-bound, 
came  all  the  way  from  America,  and  I 
we  to  leave  tomorrow.'  Which  was  not 
ue,  incidentally.  And  they  actually  opened 
at  gate  for  Artie."  □ 


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Page  48:  Suzanna  Andrews  styled  by  Tina  Skouras. 
Page  50:  Elrssa  Schappell  styled  by  Sukey  Bolton,  peket 
by  Shanghai  Tang,  from  Shanghai  Tang,  NYC 
Page  56:  Meryl  Streep  styled  by  L'Wren  Scott  for 
Vernon  Jolly  Inc.;  robe  and  gown  by  Donna  Karan  Inti- 
mates, from  Donna  Karan,  N.Y.C,  earrings  by  Martin 
Katz,  from  Martin  Katz,  Beverly  Hills 
Page  151:  Brittany  Murphy's  Dolce  &  Gabbana  dress 
from  Saks  Fifth  Avenue,  NYC,  Kim  Debus  for  Jam  Arts,  NYC 
Pages  164-65:  Julia  Roberts's  Viktor  &  Rolf  Haute  Cou- 
ture shirt  by  special  order;  call  01 1-33-1-42-33-93-05 
Page  166:  Veronique  Branquinho  shirt  from  Barneys 
New  York,  N.Y.C 

Pages  168-69:  Chanel  Haute  Couture  dress  by  spe- 
cial order  from  the  Chanel  Boutique,  Paris,  Fred  Leighton 
jewelry  from  Fred  leighton,  N.Y.C 
Page  170:  Atelier  Versace  dress  and  boots  by  special 
order  from  the  Versace  Fifth  Avenue  boutique,  NYC, 
Po  for  Lost  Art  hat  from  lost  Art,  NYC 
Pages  172-73:  L'Wren  Scott  for  Vernon  Jolly  Inc 
Pages  182-83:  Ricky  Martin's  Gucci  shirt  and  pants 
from  Gucci,  Beverly  Hills,  I'Wren  Scott  for  Vernon  Jolly  Inc 
Page  207:  Keely  Smith  styled  by  Daisy  Kramer  for 
Visages  Style,  coat  by  Catherine  Regehr,  by  special 
order  from  Saks  Fifth  Avenue  stores  nationwide. 
Page  215:  See  credit  for  pages  172-73 

Beauty  and  Grooming 

Cover:  Julia  Roberts's  hair  styled  with  Neutrogena  Clean 

Shampoo-Balancing.  All  makeup  from  Neutrogena.  On 

her  cheeks,  Soft  Color  Blush  in  Vibrant  Poppy;  on  her  lips, 

Lip  Plush  Lip  Color  in  Riot  Red. 

Page  48:  Suzanna  Andrews's  hair  and  makeup  by 

Maria  Verel. 

Page  50:  Elissa  Schappell's  hair  by  Marco  Scott  and 

makeup  by  Gila  Bass,  both  for  Susan  Price,  Inc. 

Page  56:  Meryl  Streep's  hair  and  makeup  by  J.  Roy 

Helland. 

Page  151:  Steven  Ward  for  Garren  New  York,  Denise 

Markey  for  Club  Monaco  Cosmetics. 

Page  152:  Ingrid  Casares's  hair  and  makeup  by  Tati- 

jana  Shoan 

Pages  172-73:  Sally  Hershberger  for  Sheer  Blonde, 

Denise  Markey  for  Club  Monaco  Cosmetics. 

Pages  182-83:  Ricky  Martin's  grooming  by  Jo  Strel- 

tell  for  Cloutier 

Page  194:  Bob  and  Dolores  Hope's  hair,  makeup, 

and  grooming  by  Mary  Gaffney 

Page    196:  Brad   Dunning's  grooming    by    Luonne 

Prima  for  the  Givenchy  Spa. 

Page  197:  President  Gerald  Ford's  and  Betty  Ford's 

hair,  makeup,  and  grooming  by  Eric  Barnard  for  Cloutier 

Page  207:  Keely  Smith's  hair  and  makeup  by  luanne 

Prima  for  the  Givenchy  Spa. 

Page  215:  See  credits  for  pages  172-73. 

Page  232:  Jackie  Collins's  hair  by  Teddy  Antolin  for 

Beauty  &  Photo. 

Photographs  and  Miscellany 

Cover:  Jack  Flanagan  for  Smashbox  NYC 
Page  24:  From  Retna. 


Page  56:  Props  styled  by  Pedro  Zalba. 
Page  60:  From  MPTV 

Page  76:  Courtesy  of  the  National  Coalition  to  Abolish 
the  Death  Penally 
Page  78:  From  People,  ©  1 986. 
Page  80:  From  Reuters/Paolo  Cocco/ Archive  Photos. 
Page  126:  Large  photograph  from  Keystone/Sygma, 
inset  from  Contact  Press  Images. 
Page  132:  Top,  from  Sipa  Press,  bottom,  from  Reuters/ 
Archive  Photos. 

Page  134:  Top,  from  Sipa  Press,  center  and  bottom, 
from  U.Pl./Corbis-Bettmann 

Page  138:  Top,  from  U.Pl./Corbis-Bettmann,  bottom, 
from  A.P./Wide  World  Photos 

Page  140:  Top,  from  A.P./Wide  World  Photos;  center, 
from  U  Pl./Corbis-Betlmann,  bottom,  from  EFE/Agence 
France-Presse 

Page  152:  Left  to  right,  by  Fred  Conrad,  from  Express 
Newspapers/Archive  Photos,  by  Kelly  Ann  Smith,  Pat- 
rick McMullan. 

Page  162:  By  Fitzroy  Barrett/Globe  Photos  (Vaughn), 
Peter  Borsari  (Kidder,  Travolta),  from  Scott  Downie/ 
Celebrity  Photo  (DiCaprio's  body,  Evans  [right]),  by  Ron 
Chapple/FPG  (crossing),  from  DMI  (Fleiss,  Hughes),  by 
Ralph  Dominguez/Globe  Photos  (Coppola's  body, 
McCarthy,  Scorsese,  Spielberg),  from  the  Everett  Collec- 
tion (De  Niro,  Estevez,  Evans  [left],  Keitel,  Lowe,  Nelson, 
Nicholson,  Pacino),  from  Ron  Galella  Ltd  (Brando, 
Coppola's  head),  from  Globe  Photos  |Hannah,  Shep- 
herd), by  Janet  Gough/Celebnty  Photo  (DiCaprio's 
head),  Todd  Kaplan/Star  File  |Sheedy),  Laura  Luongo/ 
Shooting  Star  (Diaz),  Henry  McGee/Globe  Photos 
IBIaine),  Tricia  Meadows/Globe  Photos  (Phoenix), 
Sonia  Moskowitz/Globe  Photos  (Weinstein).  from  the 
Neal  Peters  Collection  (Macchio),  by  Andrea  Renault/ 
Globe  Photos  |Buscemi,  Dorff),  Lisa  Rose/Globe  Photos 
(Affleck  and  Damon),  David  Sacks/FPG  |gun),  from 
Shooting  Star  |Douglas),  by  Jim  Smeal/Ron  Galella 
Ltd.  (Driver),  Waller  Smilh/FPG  (syringe),  Gene  Tnndl/ 
Globe  Photos  (Williams) 

Page  175:  Top,  from  Sipa;  bottom,  from  Contact  Press 
Images 

Pages  178-79:  From  the  Everett  Collection 
Page  181:  From  Archive  Photos,  the  Everell  Collection, 
Ihe  Neal  Peters  Collection,  Pholofest,  Retna. 
Page  185:  From  FPG 

Page  186:  From  Archive  Photos  (Torme),  from  the  Frank 
Driggs  Collection  (Page,  poster),  from  UPl/Corbis- 
Bettmann  (Grable). 

Page  187:  Clockwise  from  top  left,  by  Charles  Peter- 
son/Courtesy of  Don  Peterson,  Martha  Holmes/Life 
magazine,  ©  Time  Inc.,  from  the  Time  Inc  Picture  CoL 
leclion,  from  UP  I  /Corbis-Bettmann,  from  the  Kobal  Col- 
lection, from  the  Frank  Driggs  Collection 
Pages  188-89:  Large  photograph  from  U.P.I /Corbis- 
Bettmann,  inset  from  Time  Inc 

Page  213:  Courtesy  of  the  Royal  Hashemile  Court  of 
Jordan 

Pages  219-22:  From  Archive  Photos,  Ihe  Everett  Col- 
lection, Movie  Still  Archives,  the  Neal  Pelers  Collection, 
Pholofest,  Python  |Monry)  Pictures  Ltd.,  Relna 

Editor's  note:  In  the  May  issue,  the  credits  for  page 
1  36  were  inadvertently  omitted.  Donny  Osmond  was 
styled  by  Silvia  Ryder  for  Celestine  Shirt  by  Bill  Tornade, 
pants  by  Kor,  both  from  H  Lorenzo,  West  Hollywood, 
shoes  by  Skechers,  from  Skechers  stores  nationwide 
Grooming  by  Robert  Ryan  and  Gail  Rowell-Ryan  Vintage 
microphone  from  RC  Vintage,  Hollywood 


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J  N  E      19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


rundnrium 


Michael  Lutin  tells  (/('minis  to  claim  temporary  insanity 


sj  |      ^\    MAV2I      JUNE2I 

i  n  the  most  wildly  delusional  mental  patients  occasionally  exhibit  as- 
tounding Sashes  ol  insight  and  perception  l  hat's  because  they  often  ex- 
,-  reality  with  an  expanded  awareness  that  we  could  all  benefit 
inderst  Hiding  Without  making  any  insulting  comparisons  of  your 
current  state  <>i  mind  to  that  ol  a  lunatic,  let's  just  say  that  planetary 
squares  between  your  l'th  and  12th  houses  frequently  blur  the  line  that 
separates  fact  from  fiction.  So  when  loved  ones  tell  you  that  you're  losing 
it    iiisl  blame  the  whole  thing  on  astrology. 


CANCER      ^JP      JUNE   22-JULY   22 

\ie  you  nisi  having  one  of  your  regular  death-anxiety  attacks,  or  are  you 
actually  going  broke.'  With  Uranus  conjoining  the  south  node  in  your  so- 
lar 8th  house,  it's  probably  a  little  of  both.  If  you  would  only  keep  your 
mind  on  business,  you  would  have  nothing  to  fret  about.  By  the  way,  the 
starving-artist  act  is  getting  pretty  old,  not  to  mention  that  weary  routine 
about  refusing  to  prostitute  yourself.  And  speaking  of  sex,  frankness  and 
honesty  are  line,  but  there's  no  reason  you  have  to  expose  your  backside 
to  the  entire  world.  That's  a  bit  much. 


LEO 


SI 


JULY    23-AUG.     22 


It  would  be  delicious  indeed  if  you  could  follow  your  fantasy  to  its  illogi- 
cal conclusion  without  fear  of  the  consequences.  That  way  you  could  to- 
tally immerse  yourself  in  someone  else's  problems  and  allow  him  or  her 
to  lead  you  into  a  land  of  ecstatic  union.  As  the  ruler  of  your  7th  house 
meets  the  dragon's  tail  which  is  there  now,  that  probably  sounds  like  a 
great  idea.  However,  it  would  be  the  stupidest  thing  you  could  do.  Unless 
you  keep  a  healthy  distance  from  the  object  of  your  desire,  you're  going 
to  get  lost.  Like  it  or  not,  you  have  your  position  to  think  of. 


w 


AUG.     23-SEPT.     22 


VIRGO 

The  irritating  itches  and  glitches  you  are  experiencing  are  just  part  of  life, 
and  everybody  has  to  cope  with  them.  There  is  no  government  conspiracy 
to  introduce  germs  into  your  tummy  or  bugs  into  your  computer.  When 
the  ruler  of  the  6th  house  squares  the  ruler  of  the  9th,  you  have  to  be- 
come superbly  Virgo-like,  keeping  your  engine  clean  and  your  head  high. 
By  the  way,  the  reputation  Virgos  have  for  being  clean-freaks  is  absolutely 
laughable.  Many  of  them  change  their  underwear  only  on  days  when  they 
know  company  is  coming. 

LIBRA     «Cs     SEPT.    23-OCT.    23 

Saturn  in  your  solar  8th  house  squaring  Uranus  and  the  south  node  in 
your  5th  could  spell  excitement.  But  get  ahold  of  yourself.  In  relation- 
ships you're  supposed  to  be  the  soul  of  prudence,  purity,  and  piety.  If  you 
could  cast  your  eyes  demurely  down  and  cope  with  monogamy— as  colos- 
sally  boring  as  it  can  be— you'd  be  fine.  Current  planetary  transits,  how- 
ever, keep  drums  beating  and  hearts  thumping,  so  it's  difficult  to  knuckle 
under  and  behave  in  a  decorous  and  chaste  fashion.  A  word  of  advice: 
Play  all  you  want.  Just  don't  start  something  you  can't  finish. 


SCORPIO 


nv 


OCT.    24-NOV.    21 


Even  if  the  pipes  in  the  bathroom  burst  and  the  upstairs  bedroom  crash- 
es down  to  the  basement,  you  can  still  smile  bravely  and  tell  the  world 
that  your  home  is  your  castle.  It's  all  just  fallout  from  a  planetary  volcano 
erupting  in  your  4th  house.  In  some  strange  way,  the  zoo  you  live  in 
■:eems  to  have  the  right  touch  of  madness  to  please  your  perversely  mis- 
ii  vous  nature.  Then  again,  the  fun  might  vanish  if  your  entire  family 
show  up  on  The  Jerry  Springer  Show  trashing  you  and  your 
choice  of  mate  and  your  lifestyle.  That  could  hurt. 


SAGITTARIUS 


NOV22      DEC.    21 


Everybody  around  you  knows  that  engaging  in  good  old-fashioned  hard 
work  is  the  best  way  lor  you  to  slay  grounded  now  Strict  routines  are  of- 
ten therapeutic.  With  Saturn  in  your  6th  house,  you  could  probably  stom- 
ach such  regularity  for  quite  a  while,  but  with  Uranus  squaring  Saturn 
from  your  3rd  house  at  the  same  time,  there's  no  way  you  can  keep 
marching  in  the  zombie  parade.  Your  siblings,  loved  ones,  and  neighbors 
have  no  idea  that  you're  feeling  so  jumpy  you  can't  even  watch  a  TV 
show  from  start  to  finish.  And  they  expect  you  to  hold  down  a  job? 


>5 


CAPRICORN        \J      DEC       22-JAN 

When  you're  young  and  in  your  20s,  la  vie  de  buheme  is  cool.  Love  and 
art  rule.  Period.  Sometimes  the  money  is  there,  often  it's  not.  That's  cool, 
too.  As  you  get  older,  though,  you're  expected  to  adopt  a  more  traditional 
way  of  life.  Naturally  you're  aware  that  you  should  be  grown-up  now,  but 
what  are  you  supposed  to  do  when  your  ruling  planet  comes  to  your  5th, 
house  and  squares  your  2nd?  No  matter  how  hard  you  try  to  control  your 
heartstrings  and  your  purse  strings,  it's  going  to  be  Mimi-and-Rodolfo 
City.  If  you  don't  get  the  reference,  listen  to  Puccini. 

AQUARIUS     nm^     Jan.  20-feb.  is 

Apart  from  the  conjunction  of  your  planetary  ruler  and  the  accursed 
south  node  of  the  moon  in  your  solar  1  st  house,  there  doesn't  seem  to  be 
any  explanation  for  your  behavior.  You  cling  like  a  tick,  then  turn  and  run 
away.  You  say  family  means  everything  to  you,  yet  you  can't  stand  being 
stuck  at  home  or  with  relatives.  You  long  for  closeness  and  permanence, 
but  keep  pushing  everyone  away.  One  day  you  say  you're  ready  to  die,  and 
the  next  day  you  order  new  carpeting  for  the  dining  room.  What's  with 
you?  Are  you  off  your  rocker,  or  just  afraid  of  becoming  dependent? 


X 


PISCES    ^f%     FEB.     I9-MARCH20 

As  long  as  you  are  into  Big  Brother  for  money,  there's  no  place  to  run 
You  keep  trying,  though.  It's  comforting  to  have  enough  faith  in  yourself 
to  know  that  you  can  pursue  your  escapist  desires  and  appetites  to  the 
max  and  then  walk  away  from  them  once  you  are  satiated,  without  get 
ting  all  hung  up  and  addicted.  However,  there  is  one  little  thing  to  watch 
out  for,  when  the  south  node  transits  your  solar  12th  house.  You  could 
talk  a  good  game  about  being  in  control  of  yourself  while  unconsciously 
falling  deeper  and  deeper  under  the  spell  of  that  old  black  magic 

T 

ARIES  \       M AR C H    2  I  - AP R  I  L    I  9 

How  nice  of  you  to  exhibit  such  generosity  of  spirit,  no  matter  who  stabs 
you  in  the  back  or  runs  out  on  you.  It's  a  miracle  that  you  can  maintain 
that  Boy  Scout's  pledge-allegiance-to-all-mankind  look  in  your  eye.  As  the 
ruler  of  your  solar  11th  house  falls  into  the  black  hole  of  the  wicked  ok 
dragon's  tail,  it  will  take  all  your  effort  to  hang  on  to  that  wide-eyed  ideal 
ism,  especially  when  some  of  your  loftier  goals  disappear  at  the  same 
time.  It's  doubly  hard  when  you  also  have  to  scramble  for  money.  That 
does  nothing  for  your  Albert  Schweitzer  image. 

y 

TAURUS    G   APRIL  20  -  MAY   20 

Many  Tauruses  in  the  world— Queen  Elizabeth  II,  Saddam  Hussein,  anc 
the  Pope,  for  starters— are  now  struggling  to  save  face  as  they  stand  amic 
the  rubble  of  crumbling  institutions.  You  don't  have  to  be  a  royal  ruler  or 
a  fancy  political  or  religious  leader,  though,  to  feel  keenly  the  agonizing 
tension  caused  by  the  square  of  Saturn  in  your  sign  along  with  Uranus  as 
it  culminates  in  your  midheaven.  On  the  other  hand,  maybe  you're  not  so 
out  of  touch  with  the  times  after  all.  Maybe  it's  the  limes  that  are  out  ol 
touch  with  you.  Just  keep  telling  yourself  that. 


To  hear  Michael  Lutin  read  your  weekly  horoscope,  call  1-900-28 V-FAIR  on  a  Touch-lone  phone. 
Cost:  $1.95  per  minute.  If  you  are  under  18,  you  need  parental  permission. 


I 


VANITY     FAIR 


It  beckons  me  as  i  pas 


STORE   WINDOW. 


A   FLASH    OF    LIGHT    IN    THE    CORNER    OF    MY   EYE. 


STOP.    I    TURN, 


And  though  I'm  not  usually  that  kind  of  girl 
I  take  it  home. 


HAMOND    SOLITAIRE    NECKLACE    SET    IN    YELLOW   GOLD.    MOST    EXOUISITE    IN 

>e  Beers,  the  world"'-  ~ 


De  Beers 


:E    1888.    WWW.ADIAMONDISFOREVER.COM  A    DIAMOND    IS    FOREVER 


Jackie 
Colli 


ms 


Hollywood's  own  Marcel  Proust, 

Jackie  Collins  has  been  spinning 

steamy  tales  of  Louisiana1  's  patrician 

class  for  more  than  30  years. 

This  month  Collins  strikes  again 

with  Dangerous  Kiss  (her  22nd  novel), 

and,  herein,  an  homage  to  L.A., 

F.  Scott  Fitzgerald,  and  leopards — 

a  few  of  her  favorite  themes 


me  on 


What  is  your  idea  of  perfect  happiness? 

Sitting  at  my  desk  with  my  characters  taking 
a  wild  trip! 

What  is  your  greatest  fear? 

Being  held  up  by  a  masked  gunman.  It  happened  once 
and  I  made  a  daring  escape.  If  it  happens  again, 
I  think  I'd  freak! 


Which  historical  figure  do  you  most  identify  with? 
Frank  Sinatra.  He  did  il  his  way. 

Which  living  person  do  you  most  admire? 

Schoolteachers,  doctors,  cops.  What  would  we  do 
without  them? 

What  is  the  trait  you  most  deplore  in  yourself? 

Saying  yes  when  I  really  want  to  say  no. 

What  is  the  trait  you  most  deplore  in  others? 

People  who  gossip  behind  your  back.  If  you've  got  a 
problem,  confront! 

What  is  your  favorite  journey? 

A  British  Airways  flight  to  London— I  lake  it  four  times 
a  year. 

What  do  you  consider  the  most  overrated  virtue? 

Piousness. 

Which  words  or  phrases  do  you  most  overuse? 

Fuckhead— it's  one  of  my  favorites! 

What  is  your  greatest  regret? 

That  my  mother,  Elsa,  never  lived  to  see  what  I  was  able 
to  achieve. 

What  or  who  is  the  greatest  love  of  your  life? 

My  three  incredible  daughters. 

When  and  where  were  you  happiest? 

Right  now.  Life's  an  adventure— you've  got  to  live  it 
every  day. 

What  is  your  current  state  of  mind? 

Sanguine. 

If  you  were  to  die  and  come  back  as  a  person  or  thing, 
what  do  you  think  it  would  be? 

A  leopard. 

If  you  could  choose  what  to  come  back  as,  what  would  it  be? 

The  first  female  president— or  a  leopard! 

What  is  your  most  treasured  possession? 

My  handwritten  manuscripts. 

What  do  you  regard  as  the  lowest  depth  of  misery? 

Total  boredom. 

Where  would  you  like  to  live? 

L.A.  It's  the  greatest. 

What  is  your  most  marked  characteristic? 

Understanding  people's  problems— I'd  have  been  a  great 
shrink. 

Who  are  your  favorite  writers? 

F.  Scott  Fitzgerald,  Mario  Puzo,  Dickens,  and  Tom  Wolfe. 

Who  is  your  favorite  hero  of  fiction? 

Jay  Gatsby. 

Who  are  your  heroes  in  real  life? 

My  fiance,  Frank  Calcagnini. 

What  are  your  favorite  names? 

Lucky,  Jade,  Montana,  and  Nick. 

What  is  your  motto? 

"Girls  can  do  anything!" 


PHOTOGRAPH    BY    STEWART     SHINING 


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MR.  SMITH  GOES  TO  TUCSON      88 


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Features 


MADNESS  VISIBLE  I  78 

Ancient  symbol  of  victimization  and  redemption,  Kosovo 
is  now  the  flash  point  of  a  Great  Power  political  standoff  over 
NATO's  bombing  of  Serbia.  Six  years  after  covering  the 
Bosnian  tragedy,  Janine  di  Giovanni  returns  to  the  region  to 
witness  the  horror  of  the  Serbs'  latest  crusade  for  a 
mythic  kingdom— while  more  than  a  million  Kosovars 
lose  loved  ones,  history,  and  future. 

KRALL  OF  THE  WILD  |  86 

Bruce  Weber  and  Richard  Merkin  spotlight  Canadian 

jazz  singer  and  pianist  Diana  Krall,  who  has  put  her  refreshingly 

simple  imprimatur  on  a  new  CD,  When  I  Look  in  Your  Eyes. 

WILL  SMITH  RIDES  HIGH   |  88 

July  Fourth  brings  Wild  Wild  West,  another  big  action-comedy 
vehicle  for  Hollywood's  happy  trailblazer  Will  Smith. 
Ned  Zeman  discovers  why  everyone  who  knows  Smith  thinks 
the  30-year-old  rap  and  movie  star  should  be  designated 
a  national  treasure.  Photographs  by  Annie  Leibovitz. 

GUCCI  AND  GOLIATH   |  94 

In  January,  as  Bernard  Arnault,  rapacious  chairman  of  the 
luxury-goods  empire  L.V.M.H.,  moved  toward  a  takeover  of  newly 
chic  and  profitable  Gucci,  it  looked  like  easy  prey.  Instead, 
Gucci  C.E.O.  Domenico  De  Sole  and  star  designer  Tom  Ford 
fought  back.  Bryan  Burrough  has  the  play-by-play  on 
a  struggle  that  continues  to  grip  the  fashion  world. 

A  PASSAGE  TO  SIAM   I  102 

Julian  Broad  and  Laura  Jacobs  spotlight  this  year's  film  retelling 
of  a  beloved  story,  with  Jodie  Foster  as  English  governess  Anna 
Leonowens  and  Chow  Yun-Fat  as  Siam's  obstinate  monarch. 

BANDS  ON  THE  RUN   |  106 

Bruce  Springsteen,  Bob  Dylan,  and  Lauryn  Hill  are  in  a 

crowd  of  top  rockers  taking  to  the  road  this  summer. 

Lisa  Robinson  maps  the  tours.  Illustration  by  Robert  Risko. 

TO  LOVE  AND  LOVE  NOT  |  108 

Society  beauty  Jane  Kendall  Mason's  thirst  for  adventure  attracted 
a  string  of  high-testosterone  men,  including  Ernest  Hemingway. 
But  as  Alane  Salierno  Mason  concludes,  after  piecing  together 
just-discovered  correspondence  between  her  adoptive 
grandmother  and  the  legendary  writer,  Jane  would  also  inspire 
the  creation  of  two  famous  fictional  Hemingway  "bitches." 

THE  SORROW  AND  THE  BEAUTY  |  118 

Next  month,  HBO  will  air  the  story  of  groundbreaking  black  singer 
and  movie  actress  Dorothy  Dandridge.  Firooz  Zahedi  and  Kevin 
Sessums  focus  on  Halle  Berry's  portrait  of  the  tragic  beauty. 

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GREEN  GIANTS  |  120 


J  U l Y      19  9  9 


Michael  O'Neill  captures  16  of  golf's  current  and  future  legends, 
while  Scott  Gummer  adds  up  their  titles,  and  their  totals. 


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REBEL  GHOSTS  I  34 

The  Battle  of  Gettysburg  decided  the  fate  of  our  nation.  On  its 
135th  anniversary,  Christopher  Hitchens  joined  50,000  oddballs, 
history  buffs,  and  Civil  War  enthusiasts,  many  of  them  searching 
for  the  glory  in  an  epic  defeat.  Photographs  by  Robert  Longo. 

HALL  OF  FAME  |  46 

David  Kamp  nominates  New  York  congressman  Jerry  Nadler 
for  making  the  right  kind  of  waves,  from  the  Hudson  River  to  the 
banks  of  the  Potomac.  Portrait  by  Harry  Benson. 

THE  LIFE  OF  ANDY  |  48 

With  an  excerpt  from  their  new  screenplay,  Larry  Karaszewski  and 
Scott  Alexander  preview  Man  on  the  Moon,  Milos  Forman's 
next  film,  starring  Jim  Carrey  as  offbeat  comedian  Andy  Kaufman. 

TWO  ANGRY  MEN   I  56 

The  acrimony  between  Disney's  Michael  Eisner  and  former  studio 
chief  Jeffrey  Katzenberg  has  led  to  an  astonishing  courtroom 
showdown  over  how  much  Katzenberg  is  owed  from  hits  such  as 
Tlie  Lion  King.  But  with  reputations  sullied  on  the  witness  stand, 
Kim  Masters  wonders  if  this  trial  can  have  a  winner. 


\knities 


PIED  PIPER  I  71 

Indie  rockers  of  Pavement  enter  the  Twilight  zone;  Ben  Stiller 
and  Janeane  Garofalo  bare  their  souls  to  George  Wayne; 
Party  Politics— the  White  House  Correspondents'  Dinner. 


Et  Cetera 


EDITOR'S  LETTER:  The  warrior  culture  I  22 

CONTRIBUTORS  I  24 

LETTERS:  Black  tie  and  the  Beltway  I  30 

CREDITS  I  147 

PLANETARIUM:  Remember  the  80s,  Cancer?  I  154 

PROUST  QUESTIONNAIRE:  Harry Connick Jr.  |  156 

TO  UNI)  CONDI   NAST  MAO  A/IN  I  S  ON  Till    WOK  I  I)  WIDE  WEB.  VISIT  WWW  epiCUHOUS  COm 

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\,  hile  there  does  exist  a  certain  unwritten  code  among  seasoned  travelers  that 
discoveries  are  meant  to  be  shared,  there  are  times  when  this  code  is  put  to  a  test. 
Such  as  those  times,  for  example,  when  the  discovery  is  deemed  too  special  to  share 
with  even  the  most  close-mouthed  of  friends.        CHANCES  ARE  YOU  WON'T   HEAR  ABOUT 
This  may  very  well  be  the  case  with  Casa  Del  US   THROUGH   WORD   OF   MOUTH. 

Mar,  a  remarkable  new  hotel  located  on  the  beach  in  Santa  Monica,  California. 

After  all,  here  a  sense  of  casual  European  elegance  pervades,  creating  a 
welcome  atmosphere  of  sophistication  without  pretension.  Glorious  ocean  views 
beckon  from  almost  every  window  of  the  well-appointed  rooms.  While  those  who 
[  °"*ni<ffeadmfHoteisaft}i<fWorki'  j  venture  into  the  world  outside  find  themselves  at  the  very 
crossroads  of  all  of  Southern  California,  with  a  myriad  of  shopping  districts  at  their 
doorstep  and  the  internationally  renowned  Getty  Center  a  short  drive  away. 

Of  course,  once  you've  experienced  a  hotel  such  as  this  firsthand,  you  may  find 
yourself  facing  much  the  same  dilemma  as  your  fellow  travelers.  And  you  too  may 
come  to  the  most  uncharitable  conclusion  that  even  friendship  has  its  limits. 

For  more  information  or  reservations,  please  call  your  travel  agent  or 
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Telluride 

The    26th    Telluride     Film     Festival 

kicks  off  this  Labor  Day  weekend, 
Friday,  September  3,  through  Monday, 
September  6.  Set  against  the  backdrop  of 
the  exquisite  Colorado  Rockies,  Telluride 
has  been  hailed  as  the  world's  most 
intimate  film  festival,  celebrating  all 
aspects  of  the  art  of  film-worldwide,  past 
and  present.  Past  premieres  include: 
The  Crying  Game,  The  Piano,  Sling  Blade, 
Secrets  &  Lies,  Eve's  Bayou,  Rushmore, 
and  Happiness. 

Passes  for  the  1999  program  are  now 
available:  Acme  Passes  are  $250,  Festival 
Passes  are  $500,  and  Patron  Passes 
are  $2,500.  For  tickets  or  to  request 
more  information,  call  603-643-1255,  fax 
603-643-5938,  e-mail  tellufilm@aol.com, 
or  visit  the  Festival  Web  site  at 
www.telluridefilmfestival.com. 

For  information  about  sponsoring 
the  Telluride  Film  Festival,  please  call 
Nancy  Berger,  Associate  Publisher  of 
Vanity  Fair,  at  212-880-7254. 


VANITY  FAIII 


Editor  GRAYDON  C  ARTKR 


Managing  Editor  CHRIS  GARRI  1 1 

Design  Director  david  Harris 

Executive  Literary  Editor  wayni  i  awson 

Features  Editor  jani  sarkin 

Senior  Articles  Editors  DOl  Ol  \s\n  \iri  AIMI  I  hi  i  i   BRUI  i  handy 

Editor-at-Large  mait  TYRNAU1  r 

Legal  Affairs  Editor  ROBERT  WALSH    Senior  Editor  nedzeman 

Fashion  Director  ELIZABETH  saltzman    Photography  Director  susan  white 

Director  of  Special  Projects  sara  marks 

Assistant  Managing  Editor  ellen  KIELL 

Art  Director  GREGORY  mastrianni 

London  Editor  henry  porter    West  Coast  Editor  krista  smith 

Special  Correspondents  dominick  dunne.  bob  colacello. 

MAUREEN  ORTH,  BRYAN  BURROLIGH.  AMY  EINE  COLLINS 

Writer-at-Large  marie  brenner 

Special  Projects  Editor  reinaldo  herrera 

Copy  Editor  peter  devine    Research  Director  Patricia  j  singer    Photo  Editor  lisa  berman 

Photo  Research  Editor  jeannie  Rhodes    Vanities  Editor  riza  cruz 

Associate  Copy  Editor  allison  a.  merrill 

Research  Associates  olivia  j.  abel,  aliyah  baruchin,  Alexander  cohen. 

DAVID  KATZ.  DAMIEN  MlCAFFERY  GABRIEL  SANDERS 

Associate  Art  Directors  mimi  dutta,  julie  weiss    Designer  lisa  Kennedy 

Production  Managers  dina  amarito-deshan,  martha  hurley 

Assistant  to  the  Editor  punch  hutton 

Editorial  Business  Manager  mersini  fialo 

Fashion  Editor  tina  skouras    Senior  Fashion  Market  Editor  mary  e  braeunig 

U.K.  Associate  dana  brown    Paris  Editor  veronique  plazolles 

Art  Production  Manager  Christopher  george 

Copy  Production  Associate  Anderson  tepper    Associate  Style  Editor  kathryn  MacLeod 

Associate  Fashion  Editor  Patricia  herrera 

Editorial  Promotions  Associates  darryl  brantley.tim  Mchenry 

Editorial  Associates  Hilary  frank,  john  gillies,  kimberly  kessler 

Editorial  Assistants  ian  bascetta.  kate  ewald.  Michael  hogan. 

LAURA  KANG.  TARAH  KENNEDY.  SIOBHAN  Mc  DEV1TT     PhotO  Assistant  SARAH  CZELADNICKI 

Contributing  Projects  Associates  gaby  grekin.  Patrick  sheehan 

Contributing  Projects  Assistants  heather  fink,  marc  goodman.  Katharine  marx.  joaquin  torres 

Contributing  Fashion  Assistants  nicole  Li  page,  bozhena  orekhova,  mary  louise  platt 


Editor,  Creative  Development  david  friend 


Contributing  Editors 

ROBERT  SAM  ANSON,  JUDY  BACHRACH.  ANN  LOUISE  BARDACH.  LESLIE  BENNETTS, 

CARL  BERNSTEIN,  PETER  BISKIND.  BUZZ  BISSINGER,  HOWARD  BLUM.  PATRICIA  BOSWORTH,  ANDREW  COCKBURN, 

LESLIE  COCKBURN,  STEVEN  DALY,  BEATRICE  MONTI  DELLA  CORTE.  ALAN  DEUTSCHMAN. 

RUPERT  EVERETT,  JULES  FEIFFER,  BRUCE  FEIRSTEIN,  DAVID  HALBERSTAM.  EDWARD  W  HAYES,  CHRISTOPHER  HITCHEN! 

A   M   HOMES,  LAURA  JACOBS,  DAVID  KAMP.  EDWARD  KLEIN,  FRAN  LEBOWITZ.  MICHAEL  LUTIN,  DAVID  MARGOLICK, 

KIM  MASTERS,  BRUCE  MrCALL.  ANNE  McNALLY.  RICHARD  MERKIN,  FREDERIC  MORTON,  DEE  DEE  MYERS.  ANDREW  NEII 

BETSEY  OSBORNE,  ELISE  O'SHAUGHNESSY,  EVGENIA  PERETZ,  WILLIAM  PROCHNAU,  JOHN  RICHARDSON, 

LISA  ROBINSON,  ELISSA  SCHAPPELL.  KEVIN  SESSUMS.  GAIL  SHEEHY,  MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON,  ALEX  SHOUMATOFF, 

INGRID  SISCHY  SALLY  BEDELL  SMITH.  NICK  TOSCHES.  DIANE  VON  FURSTENBERG.  HEATHER  WATTS. 

GEORGE  WAYNE,  MARJORIE  WILLIAMS,  JAMES  WOLCOTT 


Contributing  Photographers 

ANNIE  LEIBOVITZ 

JONATHAN  BECKER,  HARRY  BENSON,  MICHEL  COM  IE.  DAFYDD  JONES. 

HELMUT  NEWTON.  MICHAEL  O'NEILL.  HERB  RITTS.  DAVID  SEIDNER.  SNOWDON.  BRUCE  WEBER.  ETROOZ  ZAHEDI 

Contributing  Artists  tim  sheaefer.  Robert  risko.  Hilary  knight 

Contributing  Editor  (Los  Angeles)  wendy  stark  morrissey 

Contributing  Photography  Editor  sunheec.  grinnell 

Contributing  Stylists  kim  meehan,  nicolettasantoro 


Director  of  Public  Relations  BETH  ksi  niak 

Deputy  Directors  of  Public  Relations  anina  c  mahoni  y.  siiaron  schieffer 

Deputy  Director  of  Public  Relations-Europe  anna  byng 


Editorial  Director  JAMES  TRUMAN 


JULY     I  9  9 


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REFERENCES 


..Available  upon  request. 


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Executive  Director,  Jewelry  and  Watch  LINDA  s  klonlr 

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VANITY     F  A  I 


JULY     199 


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.us.  whethei  they're  waged  between 

nations  corporations,  or  individuals, 

are  launched  for  myriad  reasons 

some  of  them  rational.  The  results, 

however,  invariably  produce  moments 

ill  breathtaking  human  misery,  as  Ja- 

nine  di  Giovanni's  report  from  Koso- 
vo, "Madness  Visible,"  on  page  78,  so  vividly  doc- 
uments I  his  is  di  Giovanni's  second  tour  of  duty 
covering  Balkan  wars.  She  reported  on  the  Bosnian 
disaster  from  1992  and  though  the  London  Times 
correspondent  laced  gunpoint  capture  by  Serb  sol- 
diers on  this  assignment  with  the  elan  of  a  war-weary  veteran,  she 
nevertheless  struggled  with  her  own  anger  and  heartbreak  as  she  wit- 
nessed the  human  tragedies  scattered  around  her.  Although  the  U.S. 
is  leading  NATO's  bombing  campaign  for  humanitarian  reasons,  the 
Allied  assault  has  led  to  the  destruction  of  at  least  one  of  the  Kosovan 
villages  it  set  out  to  defend,  and  to  the  by  now  infamous  bombing  of 
the  Chinese  Embassy  in  Belgrade.  Talk  about  lunacy:  the  C.I.A.— 
which  last  year  cost  the  taxpayers  $26.7  billion— blames  the  snafu  on 
out-of-date  surveillance  maps.  Right  after  the  bombing,  I  dispatched 
a  V.F.  assistant  to  the  New  York  Public  Library.  In  an  hour,  he  re- 
turned with  kabob  stains  on  his  shirt  and  a  1998  tourist  map  indi- 
cating which  block  the  embassy  was  located  on. 

Soldiers  have  invented  some  gloriously  indelible  terms  to  describe 
the  messy  business  of  war:  "snafu"  (Situation  Normal:  All  Fucked 
Up)  was  one  of  the  more  memorable  coinages  of  World  War  II; 
Vietnam  gave  us  "collateral  damage"  as  a  euphemism  for  unintend- 
ed destruction.  Kim  Masters's  report  on  the  courtroom  showdown 
capping  Hollywood's  bitterest  grudge  match  since  Lewis  broke  up 


Desert  Son 


Will  Smith  impressed  everyone 

on  ihe  photo  shoot  with  his  riding  skills. 

Here,  Smith  casts  a  long  shadow 

at  Old  Tucson  Studios- Mescal  in  Arizona. 

Photographed  by  Annie  Leibovitz 

on  April  9.  1999. 


with  Martin  is  an  object  lesson  in  the  latter 
DreamWorks  principal  Jeffrey  Kat/.enberg  and  hi; 
former  employer  Disney  C.E.O.  Michael  Eisnei 
have  been  skirmishing  for  five  years  over  how  bij 
a  bonus  Disney  owes  Katzenberg  for  his  steward 
ship  of  such  hits  as  Aladdin  and  The  Lion  King 
In  "Two  Angry  Men,"  on  page  56,  Masters  sug 
gests  that  whatever  money  Eisner  saves  (or  Katz 
enberg  gains)  as  a  result  of  their  scorched-eartl 
|  hearings,  the  damage  to  both  men's  reputations 
and  Disney's,  has  been  considerable. 

For  a  remarkable  glimpse  into  the  machina 
tions  of  corporate  warfare  on  the  highest  level,  I  direct  you  to  th< 
pages  of  Bryan  Burrough's  marvelous  account  of  white-hot  Gucci*!- 
five-month  struggle  to  avoid  being  gobbled  up  by  Bernard  Arnaultl 
the  famed  chairman  of  L.V.M.H.,  the  luxury-goods  empire  that  in 
eludes  Vuitton,  Dior,  and  Veuve  Clicquot.  It  is  quite  simply  one  oi 
the  most  engaging  tales  of  a  takeover  battle  since,  well,  Barbarian,, 
at  the  Gate,  which  Burrough  co-authored. 

Last,  but  definitely  not  least,  we  have  Christopher  Hitchens  tak 
ing  a  well-earned  and  doctor-advised  break  from  covering  our  sit 
ting  president.  In  his  report  "Rebel  Ghosts,"  on  page  34,  Hitchens 
taps  into  the  legacy  of  a  resounding  military  defeat.  Just  as  th< 
Serbs  are  still  haunted  by  the  14th-century  Battle  of  Kosovo,  thou 
sands  of  Civil  War  re-enactors  can  be  found  every  July  reliving  the 
Battle  of  Gettysburg,  the  bloody  birth  of  modern  America,  ir 
which  about  11,000  lives  were  lost.  What  Hitchens  underlines  b> 
joining  the  dusty  festivities  on  the  135th  anniversary  of  the  slaugh 
ter  is  that,  in  so  many  ways,  defeat  leaves  a  more  powerful  taste 
than  victory.  -GRAYDON  CARTER 


if 


ON  THE  a 

Will  Sniilh  m-ars 

sliirt  h\    loniim  llilti'j. . 

Collection.  .Ivans  In  Gucci. 

Boots  hi  Justin.  Iliiir 

\n  Edward  P.  Listen-  \ustin. 

Grooming  In  ,lml\ 

Murdock.  Props  styled 

lit  Rick  limit.  Styled,  by 

illi'n.  Photographed 

i\cllisivcl>  for  I'.F. 

I>\  Annie  I  cihovitz. 


GIORGIO  ARM  \M 

OCCHIALI 


ADVERTISING 

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Contributors 


Behind  Janine  di  Giovanni's  eyewitness  account  of  the  unfolding  horrors 
of  Kosovo,  which  appears  on  page  78,  lie  years  of  reporting  experience 
in  the  troubled  Balkans.  Her  frontline  Bosnian  coverage  culminated  with  her 
1995  book,  The  Quick  and  the  Dead:  Under  Siege  in  Sarajevo.  Now  a  war 
correspondent  for  the  London  Times,  di  Giovanni  says,  "It's  vital  that 
people  know  what's  happening  in  these  situations  because  most  of  the  time 
it's  beyond  imagination."  Di  Giovanni  has  also  covered  hostilities  in 
Algeria,  Rwanda,  the  Gaza  Strip,  and  Nicaragua. 


Reporting  on  the  battle  over  the 
Gucci  fashion  empire  was  like  "slipping 
on  a  wonderful  old  suit"  for  special 
correspondent  Bryan  Burrough,  A  former 
Wall  Street  Journal  reporter,  Burrough 
has  always  thrived  on  the  drama  of  the 
takeover  deal,  explaining,  "It's  the 
strategy,  the  tactics,  the  testosterone." 
But  he  isn't  alone  in  getting  a  thrill  out  of 
the  current  financial  scene  in  Europe. 
"There's  a  sense  that  Europe  is  where 
Wall  Street  was  in  1982,"  says  Burrough, 
who  traveled  to  London,  Amsterdam, 
and  Paris  for  this  article.  "And  that 
makes  it  a  tremendously  exciting  time  to 
be  writing  about  European  business." 


An  editor  at  W.  W.  Norton  and  an 
essayist,  Alane  Salierno  Mason  is  the  adoptive 

granddaughter  of  Jane  Kendall  Mason; 

a  society  beauty  and  onetime  friend  of  Ernest 

Hemingway's,  the  elder  Mason  inspired  two 

of  the  famous  novelist's  "bitches."  "As  the 

literary  person  in  the  family,  I  was  delegated 

to  go  through  the  steamer  trunks  and 

suitcases  of  Jane's  papers,"  says  Mason. 

"I  thought  there  might  be  Hemingway  letters 

there.  Still,  I  couldn't  quite  believe  it  when 

I  found  them,  and  what  an  incredibly 

rich  trove  of  material  it  turned  out  to  be." 

Rich  enough,  it  turns  out,  that  she  was 

able  to  piece  together  the  story  of  Jane's 

extraordinary  relationship  with  Hemingway. 

Her  article  begins  on  page  108. 

CONTINI    ID    ON    PAG  I     2<< 


JULY      1999 


the  new  Visa  Signafcjrecard  has  no  preset  spending  limit." 


II 


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jiu  Signature  has  no  preset  spending  limit  and  a  recoiling  line  of  credit .  It  boasts  a  (.oncierge 
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Visit  us  at  www.freshair.org  to  find  out  more. 


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FROM  THE  FRESH  AIR  FUND,  1040  AVENUE  OF  THE  AMERICAS. 
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VANITY     FAIR 


CONTINUED    PROM    PAOI        ' 


I  ni  I  his  month's  issue,  contributing 

photographer  Michael  O'Neill 

captured  some  of  the  world's 

greatest  golf  legends,  but  one  in 

particular  made  a  lasting  impression. 

"It  was  an  incredible  thrill  to  meet  Gene 

Sarazen  before  he  passed  away,  and 

to  see  a  little  twinkle  in  his  eye  still," 

says  O'Neill,  who  photographed  Sarazen 

less  than  two  months  before  he  died  at 

the  age  of  97.  "Being  able  to  photograph 

the  grand  old  man  of  golf  was  just 

fantastic,  even  for  a  nongolfer." 


Screenwriters  Scott  Alexander  and  Larry 
Karaszewski  struggled  for  months  to 
capture  the  real  Andy  Kaufman  for  their 
new  script,  Man  on  the  Moon  (excerpted 
on  page  48),  which  recounts  the  life  of 
the  late  comedian.  But  when  Kaufman's 
former  girlfriend  reassured  the  writing 
partners  that  there  was  no  real  Andy 
Kaufman,  "a  lightbulb  went  on  and  we 
realized  that  was  our  plot,"  recalls 
Karaszewski.  "Andy  wasn't  happy  unless  there  was  a  mask  on."  The  former  U.S.C. 
roommates,  who  wrote  Ed  Wood  and  77je  People  vs.  Larry  Flynt,  have  just  directed 
their  first  film,  the  comedy  Foolproof,  starring  Danny  DeVito  and  Norm  Macdonald. 


Before  moving  to  New  York  10  years 

ago,  Vanity  Fair  managing  editor 

Chris  Garrett  lived  in  London,  where  she 

was  managing  editor  of  the  Taller  and 

later  helped  launch  the  Independent 

magazine.  At  V.F,  Garrett,  who  negotiates 

with  writers,  photographers,  publishers, 

agents,  and  Hollywood  executives,  has  seen 

major  shifts  in  the  industry.  "At  one  time, 

it  was  about  the  article  or  the  photograph," 

says  Garrett.  "Now  there  are  considerations 

of  the  book,  the  Web  site,  the  screenplay, 

the  video,  the  film.  In  just  the  last 

three  years,  V.F.  has  had  13  of  its  stories 

optioned  by  the  movies." 


Julian  Broad  traveled  all  the  way  to 
Langkawi,  Malaysia,  to  photograph  the 
cast  of  the  forthcoming  Anna  and  the  King. 
For  five  long,  sweaty  days,  the  London- 
and  New  York-based  photographer  braved 
the  sweltering  heat  to  capture  the  island's 
natural  beauty  (which,  granted,  had  been 
accentuated  by  Hollywood  set  designers). 
"What  was  great  was  to  be  able  to  combine 
the  landscapes  with  the  people,"  Broad  says, 
"and  not  being  locked  to  a  set  or  studio." 
Broad  is  currently  working  on  a  book 
of  photographs  about  urban  Texas. 

JULY     1999 


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BLACK  TIE  AND  THE  BELTWAY 


I  it  11 H   I  be  Nexl  Big  Thing  to 

-  for  the  selfish  reason  of  wanting 
Dominick  Dunne  ["Mr.  Dunne  (iocs  to 
Washington,"  May]  to  cover  ii  in  his  fas- 
cinating way.  Eagerly  I  await  anything 
new  from  Mr.  Dunne,  who  lias  the  singular 
talent  of  making  me  feel  like  a  fly  on  the 
wall  at  events  to  which  I  can  never  be  privy. 
Lucianne  Goldberg  had  been  revealed  to 
be  a  member  of  the  big-creep  club  along 
with  that  friend  to  working  girls  everywhere 
Linda  Tripp,  but  it  took  Mr.  Dunne  to 
clarity  the  extent  of  their  motives.  It's  such 
a  pleasure  to  delve  into  Mr.  Dunne's 
world.  I  revel  at  the  turn  of  every  page  and 
have  a  wave  of  melancholy  wash  over  me 


when  I  reach  the  last  sentence,  knowing  I'll 

haw  lo  wait  until  the  next  article  or  novel. 

REBECCA  L.  WHISTLER 

Fletcher,  Oklafa a 

WHILE  CLAIMING  to  have  "lost  faith"  in 
the  president  he  once  idealized,  Dominick 
Dunne  betrays  the  very  lack  of  critical 
judgment  that  pervades  the  circles  in  which 
Dunne  moves.  It  appears  that  the  same 
sort  of  celebrity-fawning  that  brought  Bill  to 
Hollywood  also  brought  Dominick  to  Bill. 
Dunne  confesses  that  much  of  his  "ardor" 
for  Clinton  had  to  do  with  star  power, 
something  with  which  he  admits  a  certain 
fascination.  Indeed,  his  having  "wept  at  the 


beauty"  of  a  well-crafted  speech  reveals 
a  devotion  to  style  over  substance  more 
reminiscent  of  a  youthful  crush  than  the 
admiration  of  an  ideologically  like-minded 
adult.  Even  more  confounding  than  this 
puerile  hero  worship  is  the  reason  he 
gives  for  his  ensuing  epiphany:  by  ex- 
plaining his  loss  of  faith  merely  in  terms 
of  the  cheapening  of  the  Oval  Office  and 
the  lack  of  "beauty  or  dignity"  in  the 
tawdry  affair,  he  evinces  a  sanctimonious- 
ness worthy  of  the  Moral  Majority. 

FRANK  R.  WOLLAEGER 

Bainbridge  Island,  Washington 

I  HAVE  ALWAYS  enjoyed  Dominick  Dunne's 
books  and  articles  because  of  his  deep 
moral  code  and  willingness  to  take  a  stand 
against  societal  wrongs.  For  this  reason,  I 
was  saddened  to  read  his  story  in  which  he 
refers  to  my  boss,  Tom  DeLay,  in  petty  and 
negative  terms  seemingly  because  the  con- 
gressman fought  for  the  moral  high  ground 
and  voted  his  conscience  in  the  investigation 
of  the  president.  How  can  Mr.  Dunne  criti- 
cize someone  for  choosing  to  fight  for  what 
he  believes  to  be  right  instead  of  kowtowing 
to  politics  and  polls?  After  all,  that  is  what 
Dunne  has  done  in  his  stories,  especially 
when  covering  the  O  J.  Simpson  trial. 

Lastly,  Dunne  refers  to  discredited  alle- 
gations against  DeLay  which  were  printed 
in  Tlie  New  Republic,  but  neglects  to  men- 
tion that  no  charges  have  ever  been  filed 
against  him,  because  the  accusations  are 
pure  fiction.  DeLay  also  addressed  these 
smears  and  affirmed  his  innocence  in  var- 
ious news  publications  long  before  your 
magazine  went  to  press.  Dunne  had  time 
to  update  his  piece  to  address  what  he 
viewed  as  outrageous  questioning  by  a 
reporter  about  the  president  and  rape, 
but  is  silent  on  the  dubious  nature  of  the 
charges  against  the  House  majority  whip. 
I  ask  Mr.  Dunne  to  live  up  to  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  straight  shooter  by  writing  about 
all  his  subjects  fairly  and  by  valuing  moral- 
ity on  both  sides  of  the  political  spectrum. 

EMILY  J.  MILLER 

Press  secretary 

Office  of  House  Majority  Whip  Tom  DeLay 

DOMINICK  DUNNE  REPLIES.  It  was  not 
Congressman  DeLay' s  "moral  high  ground"  as 
you  call  it.  thai  I  criticized,  nor  that  he  "voted  his 


Yet  another  city  not  his  own:  Once  an  ardent 
supporter  of  the  president' s,  Dominick.  Dunne 
grew  disillusioned  with  Clinton  during  his  recent 
foray  to  Washington,  D.C. 

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It's  like  a  china  shop  in  a  bull. 


everything  about  the  Range  Rover  has 
ieen  handled  with  care. 

The  hand-selected,  cross-stitched, 
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nd  re-buffed  genuine  burl  walnut. 

The  acoustically  tuned  12-speaker, 
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Sbwoofer.  Of  course. 

Such  an  infinite  measure  of  luxury 
las  helped  earn  the  Range  Rover  each  of 
he  four  distinguished  British  Royal 
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L( 'Iters 


consdena  in  tin  investigfttion  »/  tht  president." 
What  I  criticized  wen  bis  appalling  manners,  to 
/////<  rent  from  bit  tolleagm  i ',  during  theStaU  o]  the 
Union  speech,  when  hi  rmirked,  meered,  and  failed 
to  rtand  Sony  but  I  cannot  attribute  noble  motives 
in  bad  In hiii  im  Granted,  tht  congressman  did 
den)  tht  chargt  i  against  him,  but  lawyers  fin  one  of 
DeLay's  former  partners  inform  me  that  no 
charges  wen  filed,  becaust  tht  rtatute  of  limitations 
for  i'i  rjury  had  run  out.  And  last:  nowhere  did  I 
call  Sam  Donaldson's  questioning  of  the  president 
at  his  news  conference  "outrageous."  What  I  said 
was  that  it  was  the  type  of  questioning  which  will 
always  haunt  the  president  in  the  future. 

Operation  Desert  Sorrow 

LIKE  GARY  MATSUMOTO,  I  often  won- 
dered if  I  would  one  day  suffer  the  effects 
of  Gulf  War  syndrome  ["The  Pentagon's 
Toxic  Secret,"  May].  I  was  working  in 
Kuwait  City  with  the  Kuwaiti  resistance 
when  our  troops  fought  their  way  in.  I 
shudder  to  think  what  my  fate  would 
have  been  at  the  hands  of  Saddam  Hus- 
sein's thugs  had  Kuwait  not  been  liberat- 
ed by  those  brave  men  and  women.  Dr. 
Pamela  Asa's  statement  that  our  military 
personnel  are  "willing  to  take  bullets  for 
us"  is  true,  and  I  am  eternally  grateful  for 
their  courage. 

Those  who  are  suffering  from  Gulf  War 
syndrome  deserve  to  be  treated  with  more 
respect.  The  continued  evasiveness  by  gov- 
ernment officials  is  criminal  and  insulting 
to  all  the  members  of  our  armed  forces. 
As  an  American  citizen,  I  am  disgusted 
with  what  looks  like  a  classic  cover-up 
by  the  responsible  parties  regarding  the 
vaccination  of  our  soldiers  and  the  possi- 
ble link  to  Gulf  War  syndrome. 

An  obelisk  stands  on  the  grounds  of 
the  American  Embassy  in  Kuwait  City. 
On  it  are  inscribed  the  names  of  all  the 
American  military  personnel  who  gave 
their  lives  in  the  successful  pursuit  of 
our  country's  goals  during  the  Gulf 
War.  How  many  more  names  must  be 
inscribed  before  the  truth  is  finally  told? 

MICHAEL  KANO 
Vancouver,  British  Columbia 


Jazz  Mates 


AS  A  YOUNG  MUSICIAN,  I  found  David 
Hajdu's  article  on  the  intimate  bond  be- 
tween Duke  Ellington  and  Billy  Strayhorn 
["A  Jazz  of  Their  Own,"  May]  extremely  in- 
spiring. The  story  went  a  long  way  toward 
explaining  why  their  catalogue  is  so  endur- 
ing. Music  of  such  astonishing  beauty  could 
have  been  created  only  out  of  the  fearless 


irusi  lh.it  accompanies  true  love.  Whether  it 
was  more  than  fraternal  is  ultimately  imma- 
terial. What  is  important  is  that  two  such 
monumentally  gifted  people  were  able  to 
recognize  each  other  as  soul  mates.  What- 
ever Ellington's  reasons  lor  building  the 
"big,  gold,  shiny  wall"  around  himself,  ex- 
cluding all  but  Strayhorn,  at  least  he  found 
one  person  to  whom  he  could  give  all  of 
himself.  Everyone  should  be  so  lucky. 

WILLIAM  DnVALL 
Atlanta,  Georgia 

DUKE  ELLINGTON  gave  us  the  gift  of  his 

music.  Billy  Strayhorn  did  the  same.  What 
neither  of  these  generous,  gentle  cultural 
giants  gave  us  was  a  license  to  muck  about 
behind  their  closed  doors,  or,  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  band  might  have  said,  to  put 
their  business  in  the  street.  For  Mr.  Hajdu 
and  others  to  do  so  under  the  guise  of 
tribute  was  in  bad  taste. 

ROBERT  D.  CAREY 

Winthrop.  Massachusetts 


Dreaming  of  Natalie 

HELLO,  MY  NAME  IS  Joshua  Kerstein, 
and  my  parents  have  subscribed  to  Vanity 
Fair  for  some  time.  As  I  was  going 
through  the  stacks  of  magazines  on  our 
kitchen  counter,  the  picture  of  Natalie 
Portman  on  your  cover  caught  my  eye 
["Through  the  Stardust,"  by  Leslie  Ben- 
netts, May].  Now,  I  have  to  admit  that  I 
fell  for  her  a  long  time  ago.  In  Tlie  Profes- 
sional, my  curiosity  began.  In  Heat,  it  was 
heightened,  and  with  Beautiful  Girls,  it 
was  just  a  joyride.  Well,  the  reason  I  am 
going  on  about  this  is  that  in  heaven  I 
would  ask  to  escort  her  to  her  prom,  but 
I  know  that's  not  going  to  happen.  I  just 
wanted  to  let  her  know  that  I  appreciate 
her  work  and  am  looking  forward  to  see- 
ing the  upcoming  Star  Wars  movie. 

JOSHUA  KERSTEIN 
Ridgefield,  Connecticut 

Letters  to  the  editor  should  be  sent  with  the 
writer's  name,  address,  and  daytime  phone 
number  to:  Vanity  Fair.  350  Madison  Avenue, 
New  York,  New  York  10017.  Address  electronic 
mail  to  vfmail@vf.com.  The  magazine  reserves 
the  right  to  edit  submissions,  which  may  be  pub- 
lished or  otherwise  used  in  any  medium.  All 
submissions  become  the  property  of  Vanity  Fair. 

Those  submitting  manuscripts,  photographs, 
artwork,  or  other  material  to  Vanity  Fair  for 
consideration  should  not  send  originals  unless 
requested  in  writing  to  do  so  by  Vanity  Fair.  All 
unsolicited  materials  must  be  accompanied  by 
a  self-addressed  overnight-delivery  envelope, 
postage  paid.  However,  Vanity  Fair  is  not  re- 
sponsible for  unsolicited  submissions. 

JULY     1999 


Available  at 

BOSS  Hugo  Boss  SHOPS 

Atlanta;  Bal  Harbour;  Beverly  Hills; 
Century  City;  Costa  Mesa;  Dallas; 
King  of  Prussia;  Las  Vegas; 
Mc  Lean;  Scottsdale;  Short  Hills; 
Troy;  Washington,  DC 

Bloommgdale's,  New  York; 
Burdine  s,  Dadeland;  Cedncs, 
Edina;  Gary's,  Newport  Beach; 
Macy  s,  New  York;  Macy's, 
San  Francisco;  Mano's,  Seattle; 
Saks  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 

Opening  Spring  1999 
Paramus;  Barney  s.  New  York; 
Macy's,  Beverly  Center 


AND  ALL  LEADING 
OPTICAL  SHOPS 


(JnisionlKY  IliU'hons 


REBEL  GHOSTS 


On  the  fields  of  Gettysburg,  the  author  finds  the  faded  gallantry  of  a  foolish,  glorious 

defeat  battling  kitseh  and  New  Age  hallueinations  as  15,000  Civil  War 

re-enactors  attest  to  the  epic  power  of  a  136-year-old  bloodbath,  a  turning  point  in 

the  war  that  cost  more  than  600,000  American  lives 


^H    I^H    I  illiam  Faulkner's  novel  ///- 
^B  I  ^H  I  truder  in  the  Dust 
HI     HI   ally  a  20th-century  detec- 
^Hl    ^Hl    tive 

^Hf  opinion,  leaves  To  Kill  a 
■H  ^H  Mockingbird  eating  dust  of 
^H        ^H  own).   But.  toward  its 

■i  ■■  close,  it  reverts  to  the  ines- 
capable historic  texture  of  the  Old  South, 
and  the  way  in  which  that  history  can't  re- 
linquish its  inheritors,  or  be  relinquished  by 
them.  The  white  protagonist  Chick  Malli- 
son  recalls  a  soliloquy  of  his  uncle's: 

It's  all  now  you  see.  Yesterday  wont  be 
over  until  tomorrow  and  tomorrow  began  ten 
thousand  years  ago.  For  every  Southern  boy 
fourteen  years  old,  not  once  but  whenever  he 
wants  it,  there  is  the  instant  when  it's  still  not 
yet  two  o'clock  on  that  July  afternoon  in 
1863,  the  brigades  are  in  position  behind  the 
rail  fence,  the  guns  are  laid  and  ready  in  the 
woods  and  the  furled  flags  are  already  loos- 
ened to  break  out  and  Pickett  himself  with 
his  long  oiled  ringlets  and  his  hat  in  one 
hand  probably  and  his  sword  in  the  other 
looking  up  the  hill  waiting  for  Longstreet  to 
give  the  word  and  it's  all  in  the  balance,  it 
hasn't  happened  yet,  it  hasn't  even  begun 
yet,  it  not  only  hasn't  begun  yet  but  there  is 
still  time  for  it  not  to  begin  against  that  posi- 
tion and  those  circumstances  which  made 
more  men  than  Garnett  and  Kemper  and 
Armistead  and  Wilcox  look  grave  yet  it's  go- 


WAR  GAMES 

A  re-enactment  of  Confederate  general 

George  Pickett's  suicidal  charge  at 

Cemetery  Ridge  at  Gettysburg  on  the  135th 

anniversary  of  the  July  3,  1863,  battle. 


ing  to  begin,  we  all  know  that,  we  have 
come  too  far  with  too  much  at  stake  and 
that  moment  doesn't  need  even  a  fourteen- 
year-old  boy  to  think  This  time.  Maybe  this 
time  with  all  this  much  to  lose  and  all  this 
much  to  gain:  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  the 
world,  the  golden  dome  of  Washington  itself 
to  crown  with  desperate  and  unbelievable 
victory  the  desperate  gamble 

Vou  may  find  this  a  touch  overwrought, 
even  romanticized.  (Gore  Vidal  in  his 
haunting  and  superb  Lincoln  points  out 
that  in  1861  there  was  no  dome  on  the  un- 
finished Capitol,  and  the  Washington  Mon- 
ument itself  was  an  ugly  stump  that  stood 
incomplete  for  lack  of  funds.)  You  may 
even  think  it  a  trifle  ethnically  incorrect. 
(It's  only  white  southern  boys  aged  14 
years  who  can  or  do  have  this  reverie.)  You 
may  even  say  that  it's  sentimental.  (Many 
boys  of  all  ages  in  the  Old  Confederacy 
were  consecrated  Unionists,  and  many 
since  have  gotten  over  it  and  learned  to 
deal  with  it.)  But  either  you  can  feel  a  thrill 
and  a  catch  in  the  throat  at  the  mention  of 


Thermopylae  and  Agincourt,  Culloden  and 
Gallipoli,  Jarama  and  El  Alamein,  or  you 
cannot.  And  the  great  martial  epic  at  Get- 
tysburg—which you  notice  Faulkner  doesn't 
even  name,  considering  it  to  he  too  deep 
for  words— belongs  in  that  roster  of  battles, 
both  because  it  was  a  deciding  engagement 
and  because  it  featured  a  culminating  mo- 
ment of  immolating,  futile  gallantry. 

Which  is  why,  on  another  hot  July  after- 
noon, in  1998,  135  years  to  the  day  since 
the  suicidal  charge  that  still  bears  Pickett's 
name,  I  found  myself  standing  in  the  won- 
drously  beautiful  and  unchanging  scenery 
of  southern  Pennsylvania.  I  was  myself  an 
intruder  in  the  dust— the  dust  of  perhaps 
15,000  Civil  War  re-enactors,  and  twice  that 
number  of  spectators.  Hoopskirted  women 
moved  in  and  out  of  the  sutlers'  stores,  while 
brass  bands  played  "Dixie"  and  "Battle  Cry 
of  Freedom"  at  one  another,  and  blue-  and 
gray-clad  detachments  kept  a  respectful  mu- 
tual distance.  The  blue  side  was  more  uni- 
form in  the  strict  sense,  as  befits  a  regular 
army,  while  the  gray  was  often  self-equipped 
or  barefoot  or  decked  out  in  chaotic  slouch 
hats  and  overalls.  Nevertheless,  you  got  the 
strong  feeling  that  this  is  a  shade  of  gray 
that  still  sees  things  in  black  and  white. 

Available  were  copies  of  Civil  War  Times 
and  Camp  Chase  <  ontinui  d  on  page  «i 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY      ROBERT      LONGO 


JULY     1999 


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'The  Gettysburg  battle  was  effectively  over  before  it  began. 


CONTINUED     I  ROM     PAG  1      14 

Gazette  ("The  Voice  of  Civil 
War  Reenacting"),  from 
which  it's  possible  to  discov- 
er that  there  are  many  peo- 
ple who  do  this  more  than 
just  once  a  year.  Indeed,  I 
ran  into  a  gentleman  named 
Brian  Talbert,  accoutred  for 
Battery  E  of  the  Third 
United  States  Artillery,  who 
reckoned  that  he  turns  out 
in  full  kit  between  25  and 
30  weekends  each  year, 
mostly  for  the  Civil  War  but 
occasionally  for  the  Indian 
Wars  as  well.  (Union  and 
Confederate  officers,  who  had  often  been 
friends  at  West  Point,  agreed  at  least  on 
how  to  deal  with  Mexicans  and  Indians.) 
The  rest  of  the  time  he  is  an  aerospace- 
facilities  mechanic  for  Honeywell  in  Clear- 
water, Florida.  And  he  is  for  Honest  Abe, 
the  rail-splitter  and  country  lawyer  from 
Illinois.  Most  of  the  serious,  hard-core  re- 
enactors  are  worshipers  of  J.  E.  B.  Stuart 
and  Robert  E.  Lee.  (They  have,  you  might 
say,  more  to  win.)  Outside  a  souvenir  tent  I 
ran  into  Tony  Horwitz,  whose  book  Con- 
federates in  the  Attic:  Dispatches  from  the 
Unfinished  Civil  War  is  the  finest  account 
of  this  stubborn  American  subculture.  He 
pointed  to  the  Johnny  Reb  character  on  his 
dust  jacket— a  distinctly  farouche  individual 
named  Robert  Lee  Hodge.  "His  special 
trick  is  a  brilliant  impersonation  of  a  bloated 
battlefield  corpse,"  Horwitz  instructed  me. 
"He  might  be  round  one  of  the  bars  this 
evening."  Mr.  Hodge,  I  later  learned,  has 
patented  the  term  "wargasm"  for  those 
"super  hardcore"  enthusiasts  who  like  their 
re-enactments  down  and  dirty.  Some  of 
these  are  in  need  of  a  life;  others  are  gen- 
uine history  students;  still  others  tend  to  re- 
gard the  movie  Deliverance  as  an  invasion 
of  their  personal  privacy.  But,  for  all  those 
who  chafe  at  the  redneck  jeer,  the  Stars  and 
Bars  is  a  title  and  connection  to  nobility. 

I  lthough  nobody  appreciated  the  fact  at 

II  the  time,  the  Battle  of  Gettysburg  was 
/ 1  won  on  the  first  of  its  three  days,  and 
was  effectively  over  before  it  began.  The 
Army  of  Northern  Virginia  crossed  the 
Mason-Dixon  Line  into  Union  territory,  in 
real  strength  for  the  first  time,  but  without 
very  much  hard  information.  Its  supposed 
"eyes"— the  dashing  cavalry  of  the  afore- 
mentioned Stuart— preferred  to  go  off  on  a 
raiding  expedition.  So  when  the  Army  of 


HORSE  PLAY 

Civil  War  buffs  re-create  General  John 

Buford's  Union  Cavalry  defense 

of  the  high  ground  at  McPherson's  Ridge  at 

Gettysburg,  July  3,  1998. 


the  Potomac,  under  General  George  Meade, 
met  the  advance  guard  of  the  foe,  it  was 
like  two  ships  colliding  in  the  fog.  General 
John  Buford's  Union  cavalry  decided  there 
and  then  to  make  a  fight  of  it  and  to  pre- 
serve the  high  ground.  Once  they  had  done 
that,  it's  no  cliche  to  say,  the  rest  was  histo- 
ry. I  watched  this  defining  and  fateful  mo- 
ment as  it  was  re-enacted  under  a  broiling 
sun.  The  musketry  rattled  and  volleyed, 
and  the  cannons  boomed  and  gave  off  a 
satisfying  smoke,  and  files  and  ranks  and 
columns  advanced  and  redeployed.  Only 
one  element  of  authenticity  was  missing. 
Nobody  much  wanted  to  mime  the  bit 
where  you  throw  up  your  arms,  or,  more 
likely  (given  the  regular  instruction  of  those 
days  to  "aim  low"),  clutch  them  terribly 
and  suddenly  over  your  viscera  and  geni- 
talia. Hardly  anybody  volunteered  to  fall. 
You  can  understand  why  in  one  way,  be- 
cause where's  the  fun  in  lying  hot  and  still 
for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon?  You  can  see 
why  in  another  too,  because  there  are 
many  people  who  truly,  madly,  deeply 
want  to  "be  a  part  of  it"  and  who,  as 
Faulkner  understood,  half  believe  that  it 
can  still  be  made  to  come  out  differently. 


t  used  to  be  said  of  the  American  Civil 
War,  or  "the  War  Between  the  States,"  or 
"the  late  unpleasantness,"  or  "the  war  of 
Northern  Aggression,"  that  it  was  the  last 
of  the  old  wars  and  the  first  of  the  new. 
There  was  still  cavalry  and  dash  and  indi- 
vidual initiative,  in  other  words,  but  the 


ow,  growling  notes  of  mech- 
anized warfare  were  to  be 
heard  under  and  over  the 
canter  of  hooves  and  the 
drum  taps  and  the  noble  call 
of  the  bugle.  About  55,000 
men  were  blown  to  shreds  or 
died  of  appalling  wounds  or 
expired  from  thirst  and  ne- 
glect on  the  Gettysburg  field, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  some- 
what profane  to  be  strolling 
this  nearby  turf  and  buying 
kitsch  souvenirs,  or  pam- 
phlets with  titles  such  as 
Freemasons  at  Gettysburg,  or 
T-shirts  emblazoned  with 
the  legend  it's  a  southern  thing— you 
wouldn't  understand.  (Why  is  it,  when 
I  see  a  Confederate  battle  flag  flapping 
from  the  rear  of  a  pickup  truck,  that  I 
don't  axiomatically  make  the  association 
with  courtesy,  gentility,  chivalry,  and  hos- 
pitality? Perhaps  that's  the  bit  I  don't  un- 
derstand.) Anyway,  on  these  occasions 
there's  usually  a  shortage  of  volunteers  to 
play  the  Yankee  part. 

So  it  was  a  shock  to  see  the  first  black 
face  I'd  seen  all  day.  It  belonged  to  a  man 
wearing  a  Union  blue  cap  with  an  otherwise 
denim  outfit.  He  proved  to  be  not  a  keen  re- 
enactor  but  a  history  buff  from  Baltimore 
who  had  put  on  the  cap  only  as  a  badge  of 
solidarity.  He  spoke  very  knowledgeably  of 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  Lincoln's  envoy  to 
London,  and  of  his  son  Henry,  author  of 
Tlie  Education  of  Henry  Adams,  and  of  con- 
temporary British  politicians  such  as  Glad- 
stone and  Russell,  before  he  was  abruptly 
drowned  out  by  a  band  striking  up  "Dixie." 
It  turned  out  that  we  were  standing  within 
a  few  yards  of  General  Lee's  tent,  and  that 
the  Confederate  leadership  was  about  to 
give  a  "press  conference."  My  new  acquain- 
tance declined  my  suggestion  that  we  walk 
over  together  and  see  what  was  up.  (One  of 
the  first  acts  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Vir- 
ginia, on  entering  Pennsylvania  and  thus  re- 
entering the  Union,  was  to  round  up  freed 
slaves  and  send  them  south  to  be  reincorpo- 
rated into  the  unpaid  workforce.  Talk  about 
forced  integration.)  But  on  presenting  my- 
self to  Lee's  staff  I  met  the  one  re-enactor 
I  decided  to  stay  with. 

He  was  easy  to  spot,  in  his  red  coat 
and  smart  black  cap.  "Colonel  Freman- 
tle,  I  think?"  He  bowed  politely  in  re- 
sponse. Lieutenant  Colonel  Sir  Arthur 
James  Lyon  Fremantle  of  Her  Britannic 
Majesty's  Coldstream  Guards  is  a  notice- 


JUIY     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


1MB 


abl<  figure  in  Michael  Shaara's  tremen- 
dous novel,  The  Ki  r  Angels,  and  in  the 
br-T\  movie  Gettysburg,  which  is 
based  upon  it.  Fa-mantle  attached  him- 
self as  an  obsenci  to  the  Confederate 
forces  and  wrote  one  of  the  most  vivid,  if 
least  intelligent.  Civil  War  diaries.  (He 
believed  to  the  List  that  the  South  was 
unvanquishable.)  Had  Lee  carried  the 
das  m  Pennsylvania,  he  could  next  have 
moved  against  Philadelphia  or  Washing- 
ton or  both,  and  in  that  event  the  British 
Empire  might  well  have  abandoned  its 
rather  pro-southern  neutrality  and  inter- 
vened on  the  side  of  Jefferson  Davis.  The 
man  who  played  Fremantle  turned  out  to 
be  Roger  Hughes,  a  jovial  Brit  from  Not- 
tingham who  now  lives  in  Orlando  and 
works  as  a  marketing  consultant.  He's 
been  doing  the  part  for  seven  years.  We 
repaired  to  his  nearby  and  well-appointed 
tent.  Almost  every  passerby  recognized 
him.  "Of  course,  it's  partly  the  scarlet  tu- 
nic. All  the  fault  of  that  film.  Fremantle 
never  wore  his  uniform  on  the  battlefield; 
insisted  on  a  gentleman's  shooting  suit. 
But  now  people  expect  it  of  me." 

Having  been  recruited  as  a  bit  of  a  joke 
to  what  he  ironically  termed  "the  re- 
enactment  community,"  Hughes  has 
found  the  role  subtly  taking  over  his  life. 
He  has  researched  every  detail  of  Fre- 
mantle's  career,  has  written  a  novel  enti- 
tled Fremantle  and  had  it  privately  pub- 
lished in  leather  bindings,  has  visited  the 
spots  where  the  great  man  served,  and 
has  dug  forgotten  photographs  of  him  out 
of  military  archives  in  London.  "I  think," 
he  said  gravely,  "I've  got  the  best  job  in 
the  Confederate  army."  He  was  free  to 
wander  the  battlefield  without  taking  part 
in  hostilities.  Fremantle  had  actually  heard 
General  Robert  E.  Lee,  after  the  san- 
guinary fiasco  of  Pickett's  charge,  exclaim, 
"This  has  all  been  my  fault."  At  the  time, 
most  southern  partisans  did  not  want  to 
hear  this.  It  was  one  thing  for  thousands 
of  men  to  throw  away  their  lives  by  march- 
ing up  a  slope  under  heavy  fire  and  in- 
sane orders— that's  glory  for  you— but  quite 
another  to  think  of  it  as  a  blunder  com- 
mitted by  a  vain  and  fallible  old  mortal. 
The  1854  charge  of  the  Light  Brigade  was 
sound  tactics  by  comparison.  (A  salient 
element  in  Charles  Frazier's  1997  novel, 
Cold  Mountain,  is  the  way  that  the  foot- 
sore Confederate  deserter,  Inman,  comes 
to  the  realization  that  he  has  been  duped, 
and  treated  as  expendable:  "At  wide  inter- 


vals in  the  valley  stood  big  houses  with 
white  columns.  They  were  ringed  around 
with  scattered  hovels  so  that  the  valley 
land  seemed  cut  up  into  fiefdoms.  Inman 
looked  at  the  lights  in  the  big  houses  at 
night  and  knew  he  had  been  fighting  bat- 
tles for  such  men  as  lived  in  them,  and  it 
made  him  sick.") 

Sitting  with  "Fremantle"  under  the  aw- 
ning of  his  tent  was  the  bowler-hatted 
and  suspender-wearing  Francis  Charles 
Lawley,  correspondent  of  the  London 
Times  and  a  keen  partisan  for  the  Land  of 
Cotton.  He  proved  to  be  another  jovial 
Brit,  named  John  Bottoms,  a  systems  ana- 
lyst for  Cincinnati  Bell.  The  frantic  dia- 
tribes of  the  Times  against  Lincoln  and 
the  Union,  and  in  favor  of  the  slavocracy, 
were  the  despair  of  Charles  Francis  and 
Henry  Adams.  But  this  propaganda  was 
regularly  answered  by  Britain's  leading 
pro-Union  journalist.  In  his  articles  for 
Horace  Greeley's  New  York  Daily  Tribune, 
this  columnist,  Karl  Marx  by  name,  who 
helped  lead  the  pro-Lincoln  agitation  in 
England,  foresaw  the  era  of  ironclad 
ships,  the  sacking  of  the  incompetent 
Union  general  George  McClellan,  and  the 
adoption  of  the  Emancipation  Proclama- 
tion, which  declared  free  those  slaves  in 
Confederate  hands.  He  was  much  ad- 
mired by  Adams  pere  et  fils.  I  have  often 
wondered  why  the  Dixiecrat  right  doesn't 
make  more  of  this  historical  fact,  which  is 
certainly  among  those  things  that  they 
don't  teach  you  in  school. 

In  the  main  tent  at  midday,  there  was  an 
attraction  billed  as  "Civil  War  Past  Lives:  A 
Regression  Talk  by  Barbara  Lane."  I  attend- 
ed. Ms.  Lane,  in  crinoline  and  parasol  and 
with  a  bottle  of  sarsaparilla  no  doubt  near- 
by, expounded  to  a  big  audience  about  her 
belief  in  the  reincarnation  of  veterans  as  re- 
enactors.  An  understudy  of  the  moderately 
disastrous  Confederate  general  Henry  Heth 
was  produced  to  share  his  hallucinations 
with  us.  So  were  some  other  dubious 
revenants.  Only  one  man  broke  the  usual 
rule  of  the  reincarnated,  most  of  whom 
(you  must  have  noticed)  claim  to  have  been 
kings  or  demigods  in  past  lives.  "I  was  just 
a  drunken  private,"  this  chap  announced. 
His  state  at  the  time  certainly  lent  plausi- 
bility to  the  claim.  I  found  myself  growing 
irritated,  not  merely  by  the  silliness  of  the 
business  but  by  its  modernism.  If  I  visit 
blood-soaked  and  therefore  supposedly  hal- 
lowed ground,  I  want  at  least  to  hear  bom- 
bastic rhetoric,  not  subtherapeutic  battle. 


The  very  reason  lor  the  imperishability  of 
Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address,  delivered 
four  months  later  on  the  same  hallowed 
ground,  is  that  it  departed  from  convention- 
al bombast  and  oratory,  while  managing 
both  to  honor  the  past  and  to  summon  a 
common  democratic  future.  (This,  in  under 
300  words.)  I  went  straight  from  the  faux 
event  to  the  real  national  monument  down 
the  road  and  tried  to  decide  what  it  is  that 
makes  Gettysburg  so  enduring  and  intense. 

•  It  could  have  gone  the  other  way,  with 
the  future  republic  partitioned  and  partly 
enslaved. 

•  The  dead  don't  have  a  say.  I  would  pre- 
fer to  hear  from  Pickett's  squandered  foot 
soldiers  than  from  those  who  conscript 
them  for  later  speeches  and  who  take 
their  names.  Since  we  can't  hear  from 
them,  we  shouldn't  in  all  decency  pre- 
sume to  speak  for  them.  (This  goes  for 
most  such  rhetoric  on  all  sides.) 

•  Gettysburg  lasted  only  three  days,  and 
ended  on  the  eve  of  the  Fourth  of  July.  Be- 
fore the  Civil  War,  people  of  all  classes  and 
professions  would  say  "The  United  States 
are  ...  "  After  1865,  it  was  "The  United 
States  is  ...  " 

•  The  Confederate  army  was  the  last 
white  Anglo-Saxon  Protestant  (if  not  ex- 
actly Wasp)  army  to  take  the  field  on 
American  soil,  or  from  American  soil.  (Its 
battle  flag  was  the  Saint  Andrew's  cross. 
Faulkner  always  considered  himself  Scot- 
tish, and  thought  yearningly  back  to  the 
analogous  defeat  of  the  gallant  clans  of 
the  Highlands  at  Culloden  in  1746.)  In  the 
Union  ranks  were  numerous  polyglot  ref- 
ugees from  Europe,  many  of  them  veter- 
ans of  the  1848  revolution.  The  great 
melting  pot  started  to  bubble  only  after 
Gettysburg  had  been  decided. 

•  The  British  Empire  never  again  tried  to 
intervene  militarily  in  American  affairs, 
and  acknowledged  that  a  continental  Union 
was  inevitable,  so  Gettysburg  was  a  hinge 
event  in  the  gradual  eclipse  of  Britain  by 
the  United  States.  (In  the  famous  essay 
collection  //  //  Had  Happened  Otherwise, 
edited  by  J.  C.  Squire  in  1931,  Winston 
Churchill  gave  this  as  his  main  reason  for 
wishing  that  Lee  had  won.) 

•  The  southern  forces  were  defeated  by  the 
very  qualities— J.  E.  B.  Stuart's  reckless  and 
charming  indiscipline,  Lee's  steadfast  faith 
in  God's  guidance,  General  James  Long- 
street's  dogged  and  unswerving  loyalty— that 
they  admired  in  themselves  and  had  imag- 
ined would  give  them  victory.  As  Bertolt 
Brecht  says  in  "A  Worker  Reads  History": 


VANITY     FAIR 


J  U  I  Y     19  9  9 


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as  the  first  war  to  be  chronicled  by  photographers. 


"And  even  in  Atlantis  o\'  the  legend  /  The 
night  the  sea  rushed  in  /  The  drowning 
men  still  bellowed  for  their  slaves." 

•  An  unheeded  warning— about  the  supe- 
riority of  artillery  over  infantry— seems  in 
retrospect  to  make  Gettysburg  the  premo- 
nition of  the  Western  Front,  and  of  the  su- 
perannuated and  stubborn  generals  who 
presided  over  it  and  surpassed  their  pre- 
decessors in  folly. 

•  Glorious  defeats  often  have  a  greater 
emotional  effect  than  muddy  victories.  The 
Confederacy  continued  to  make  a  human 
sacrifice  of  its  best  sons,  in  the  name  of 
General  George  Pickett,  for  nearly  two 
years  after  the  lesson  of  Gettysburg  had 
been  ruthlessly  driven  home.  Dunkirk  was 
a  glorious  and  inspiring  defeat,  but  on  that 
occasion  the  big  effort  was  expended  in 
saving  the  British  army  from  Hitler  rather 
than  throwing  it  heroically  away.  And  one 
of  the  flashiest  officers  on  the  Union  side 
was  George  Armstrong  Custer  . . . 

•  This  was  the  first  war  to  be  chronicled 
by  photographers.  Mathew  Brady's  stark, 
chiaroscuro  studies  of  the  unburied  dead 
at  Gettysburg  meant  that  civilians  could 
see  what  warfare  really  looked  like,  in- 
stead of  relying  on  propaganda  sheets,  in- 
stant ballads,  and  secondhand  dispatches. 

These  were  broken  thoughts  on  a  stricken 
field,  yet  they  seemed  to  connect  to  one 
another.  (The  unexploited  and  unclut- 
tered landscape  helps  one's  thoughts  to  jell, 
even  if  Three  Mile  Island  is  only  a  day's 
march  away.)  Above  all,  there  is  the  mas- 
culinity of  the  thing.  Warfare,  they  say,  is  to 
men  what  childbirth  is  to  women:  the  essen- 
tial and  formative  and  bonding  experience. 
It  makes  you  part  of  it  all,  and  enlists  you  in 
the  unimpeachable  company  of  combatants, 
and  defines  you  as  an  individual.  Here  is 
Michael  Shaara's  description  of  the  critical 


T$- 


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OFFICERS  AND  GENTLEMEN 
At  the  Union  center  on  Cemetery  Ridge, 

re-enactors  entrench  for  the 

Confederate  cannonade  at  the  end  of 

the  three-day  "battle." 


scene  at  Little  Round  Top— the  desperately 
fought  turning  point  in  the  Gettysburg  strug- 
gle—where the  men  from  Maine  were  told 
that  on  no  account  could  they  give  up  the 
high  ground  seized  by  General  Buford,  be- 
cause they  were  the  end  of  the  line: 

The  men  were  digging  in,  piling  rocks  to 
make  a  stone  wall.  The  position  was  more 
than  a  hundred  yards  long.  Chamberlain 
could  see  the  end  of  it,  saw  the  83rd  Penn- 
sylvania forming  on  his  right.  On  his  left 
there  was  nothing,  nothing  at  all Cham- 
berlain took  a  short  walk.  Hold  to  the  last. 
To  the  last  what?  Exercise  in  rhetoric.  Last 
man?  Last  shell?  Last  foot  of  ground?  Last 
Reb?  ...  He  felt  the  emptiness  to  his  left 
like  a  pressure,  a  coolness. 

And  here  is  Ernest  Hemingway  in  For  Wliom 
the  Bell  Tolls: 

If  both  flanks  ever  held  I  suppose  it 
would  be  too  much  to  take,  he  thought.  I 
don't  know  who  is  prepared  to  stand  that. 
And  if  you  extend  along  a  flank,  any  flank, 
it  eventually  becomes  one  man.  Yes,  one 

man You  are  going  to  be  the  left  flank 

when  we  have  the  battle,  he  thought. . . . 
Well,  I  always  wanted  to  fight  one  on  my 
own.  I  always  had  an  opinion  on  what  was 
wrong  with  everybody  else's,  from  Agincourt 
down.  I  will  have  to  make  this  a  good  one. 

Robert  Jordan  and  the  other  American 
volunteers  in  the  Spanish  civil  war  were 
fighting,  of  course,  in  the  Abraham  Lincoln 
Brigade.  I  believe  that  Hemingway  must 
have  had  Gettysburg  in  mind  when  he  was 
writing  (and  perhaps  he  was  also  thinking 
of  Stephen  Crane,  who  described  the  May 


1863  battle  at  Chancellorsville  in  The  Red 
Badge  of  Courage  to  such  electrifying  effect 
that  people  thought  he  had  "been  there," 
when  he  hadn't  been  born  at  the  time). 

I  merican  letters  and  literature  became 

II  less  flowery,  more  terse,  more  ironic, 
/ 1  and  in  a  way  more  modest  and  under- 
stated after  Gettysburg  and  the  pungent, 
economical  address  that  bears  its  name. 
Walt  Whitman's  Drum-Taps  is  nearly  pro- 
saic, while  Robert  Lowell's  elegy  "For  the 
Union  Dead"  borrows  from  the  almost  Pu- 
ritan scene  that  it  describes:  "On  a  thou- 
sand small  town  New  England  greens,  / 
the  old  white  churches  hold  their  air  /  of 
sparse,  sincere  rebellion;  frayed  flags  / 
quilt  the  graveyards  of  the  Grand  Army 
of  the  Republic."  Yet,  still,  more  people 
north  and  south  would  recognize  the 
name  of  Pickett  than  would  know  of 
Joshua  Lawrence  Chamberlain.  A  skepti- 
cal professor  of  religion  and  rhetoric  at 
Bowdoin  College,  and  a  friend  of  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe's,  Chamberlain  command- 
ed the  20th  Maine  at  the  extreme  end  of 
Little  Round  Top.  He  did  not  hurl  his 
Maine  troops  into  senseless  or  theatrical 
engagements.  He  did  not  commit  lethal 
flourishes.  He  was  frugal  with  the  ammu- 
nition. He  stoically  held  the  left  flank  for 
the  Union,  and  only  as  a  last  and  medi- 
tated resort  led  a  charge  downhill  rather 
than  up,  thus  clinching  matters  in  a  mem- 
orable way.  If  he'd  been  more  of  a  blood- 
bath artist  and  war-lover,  he'd  probably  be 
the  toast  of  innumerable  men  who  have 
never  seen  a  bloated  corpse  or  smelled  a 
chest  wound,  and  who  use  such  episodes 
for  braggartry  and  beer  chasers.  But,  as  it 
happens,  it  was  the  thoughtful  Chamber- 
lain who  won  the  day,  while  those  who 
can't  forgive  the  past  are  condemned,  not 
without  pathos,  to  re-enact  it.  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


JULY     1999 


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\li\WM  hum 


I  he  fearless,  rumpled 

New  York  representative 

Jerry  Nadler,  photographed 

aboard  the  tugboat 

Sandy  G  on  the  Hudson 

River  off  Manhattan, 

February  17,  1999. 


VANITY     FAIR     NOMINATES 


Try 


Nadler 


DECAUSE,  as  the  four-term  congressional  repre- 
sentative of  Manhattan's  West  Side,  he's  lib- 
eralism the  way  it  oughta  be,  a  far  cry  from 
both  the  blanded-out,  airport-Ramada  right- 
centrism  of  Bill  Clinton  and  the  naive, 
pierced-tongue  stridency  of  the  Lollapalooza 
kids,  because  he  called  into  question  New  York  State's  headlong 
rush  to  develop  the  Hudson  River's  rotting  West  Side  piers  into 
a  public-commercial  complex,  suggesting  that  the  Army  Corps 
of  Engineers  first  issue  an  Environmental  Impact  Statement. 
because  he  wants  the  Hudson  River  Park  to  be  a  park,  not  the 
honky-tonk  retail  strip  some  developers  envision,  nor  another 
grim,  Robert  Moses-style  car-culture  desecration  of  urban  pub- 
lic space,  because  last  fall,  despite  having  no  great  love  for  Clin- 
ton, he  unhesitatingly  denounced  the  House's  impeachment  of 


the  president  as  a  "partisan  coup  d'etat"  while  more  conciliato- 
ry Democrats  waited  to  see  what  their  constituents  wanted  them 
to  say.  because,  as  the  ranking  Democrat  on  the  Judiciary  Sub- 
committee on  Commercial  and  Administrative  Law,  he's  in  fa- 
vor of  giving  that  horrid  independent-counsel  statute  a  good 
seeing-to.  because,  through  his  accomplishments  and  deeds,  he 
has  managed  to  render  irrelevant  what  you  can't  help  but  notice 
about  him:  his  considerable  girth,  because  he  got  wise  to  Dick 
Morris,  his  former  friend  and  roommate,  long  before  the  rest  of 
us  (they  haven't  been  close  since  the  1970s),  because  he  is  a 
Yankees  fan,  yet,  unlike  another  blustery  New  York  City  politi- 
cian we  know,  he  has  made  no  attempt  to  claim  the  team's  suc- 
cesses as  his  own.  BECAUSE  he  takes  New  York  wit,  causticity, 
and  intellectualism  to  a  place  where  they  are  acutely  needed: 
Washington,  D.C.  -david  kamp 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY      HARRY      BENSON 


JULY     1999 


Milk  isn't  just  for  tadpoles. 


Did  you  know  3  out  of  4  adults  don't  set  enough  calcium? 
It  takes  at  least  3  glasses  of  milk  a  day.  I  always  keep  some  at  my  pad. 


^fl>MI(ll)l«l\ 


HH 

HERE  I  COME  . . . 

Carrey  as  Kaufman, 

>j>-      lip-synching  the 

theme  song  from  Mighty 

Mouse  on  Saturday 

Night  Live. 


THE  LIFE  OF  ANDY 

With  an  excerpt  from  the 

script  for  Man  on  the  Moon,  based 

on  the  life  of  subversive 

comedian  Andy  Kaufman, 

the  screenwriters  of  Ed  Wood  and 

The  People  vs.  Larry  Flynt 

preview  their  new  movie,  opening 

in  November,  directed 

by  Milos  Forman  and  starring 

Jim  Carrey,  Courtney  Love, 

and  Danny  DeVito 

BY  SCOTT  ALEXANDER  AND 
LARRY  KARASZEWSKI 


g  audiences  today,  if  they  know  Andy  Kaufman 

at  all,  might  recognize  him  as  Latka,  the  tongue-tied, 
vaguely  Eastern  European  immigrant  on  the  televi- 
icni  series   ThxL  Or  possibly  they've  seen  him  lip- 
synching  the  Mighty  Mouse  theme  song  on  an  old  Sat- 
inilm  Night  Live  rerun.  But  knowing  Kaufman  only 
lor  his  most  popular  TV  work  is  a  hit  like  knowing 
Picasso  or  Miles  Davis  only  for  their  "Think  Different" 
Apple  ads.  As  a  comedian,  Kaufman  was  interested 
less  in  amusing  audiences  than  in  challenging  them, 
provoking  them,  even  angering  them.  His  legendary 
performances— the  word  "routines"  hardly  does  them 
justice— included  reading  The  Great  Gatsby  out  loud  (all  of  it)  to 
nightclub  audiences;  daring  women  to  wrestle  him  onstage;  tak- 
ing an  entire  Carnegie  Hall  crowd  out  for  milk  and  cookies. 
Kaufman  also  loved  putting  on  friends  and  colleagues,  so  much 
so  that  when  he  died  of  lung  cancer  in  1984,  at  the  age  of  35, 
many  in  Hollywood  suspected  him  of  faking  his  own  death  as  a 
kind  of  ultimate  performance  piece— something  he  had,  in  fact, 
discussed  doing.  Was  any  of  this  funny?  For  Kaufman,  the  ques- 
tion would  have  been  beside  the  point.  As  the  Kaufman  character 
says  in  the  Man  on  the  Moon  screenplay,  "I  want  that  audience  to 
go  through  an  experience.  They  love  me!  They  hate  me!  They 
walk  out-it's  all  GREAT!" 

The  film,  directed  by  Milos  Forman  and  produced  by  Jersey 
Films,  stars  Jim  Carrey  as  Kaufman,  along  with  Danny  DeVito 
as  his  manager,  George  Shapiro,  and  Courtney  Love  as  his  girl- 
friend, Lynne  Margulies.  Performers  who  will  appear  in  the  fol- 
lowing scenes  include  Gerry  Becker  as  Stanley  Kaufman,  Andy's 
dad;  Bobby  Boriello  as  the  eight-year-old  Andy;  and  the  real-life 
George  Shapiro  as  a  nightclub  manager  who,  early  on,  fails  to 
appreciate  Kaufman's  . . .  genius? 

This  excerpt  from  the  beginning  of  the  screenplay  follows  Kauf- 
man's life  up  to  a  quintessential  biopic  moment:  his  first  big  break. 


FADE  IN: 


EXTERIOR  KAUFMAN  HOUSE— 1957— DAY 


A  BLACK-AND-WHITE  image  slowly  becomes  COLOR.  Great  Neck, 
1957.  An  upper-class  Jewish  neighborhood.  In  the  street,  crew-cut 
BOYS  play  T-ball,  laughing  and  shouting.  A  fat  convertible  pulls  up 
to  the  smallest  house,  and  STANLEY  KAUFMAN,  35,  gets  out.  Still 
in  his  suit,  he's  a  well-meaning  slave  to  his  job— tired,  responsible. 

INTERIOR  KAUFMAN  HOUSE.  KITCHEN— DAY 

Baby  CAROL  is  crying.  Mom  JANICE,  32,  quickly  peels  carrots, 
trying  to  get  dinner  made.  Stanley  marches  past. 

STANLEY:      Is  he  in  his  room? 

JANICE:         Of  course  he's  in  his  room,  (aggravated)  All  his 
"friends"  are  in  there. 

Stanley  glowers.  He  huffs  upstairs. 

INT.  KAUFMAN  HOUSE.  HALLWAY— DAY 

Stanley  hurries  up  to  Andy's  shut  door.  We  hear  little  Andy  doing 
VOICES. 

ANDY:  (offscreen  as  WORRIED  GIRL)  But, 

Professor,  why  are  the  monsters  grow- 
ing so  big?  (now  as  BRITISH  PRO-   ■, 
FESSOR)  It's  something  in  the  jungle 
water.  I  need  to  crack  the  secret  code. 

Excerpted  from  the  screenplay  of  Man  on  the  Moon,  which  will  be  released 
in  November  by  Universal  Pictures;  ©  1999  by  Universal  Studios.  The 
screenplay,  which  was  written  by  Scott  Alexander  &  Larry  Karaszewski,  will 
be  published  in  book  form  by  Newmarket  Press,  New  York. 


J  U  t  Y     19  9  9 


A     R    A    H 


JESSICA 


PARKER 


SHE'S     BACK 


FOR    MORE 


FROM      EXECUTIVE     PRODUCER     DARREN     STAR 

NEW  EPISODES  EVERY  SUNDAY  NIGHT  AT  9  et/it 

WWW.hbO.COm/City  ";1999  Home  Box  Office,  a  Division  ol  Time  Wamet  Entertainment  Company.  LP All  nghis  reserved  "Service  marks  of  Time  Warner  Entertainment  Company.  LP        IT  O    NOT    TV    IT  O  HbU 


ocrrcMi  pim 


Stanh  '  eya  !!<■  opens  the  dooi 

INT.  KAUFMAN  HOUSE,  ANDYS  ROOM— DAY 

wi  >*>   (•/:;/;/,  performing  for  the  wall  Andy  is  happy 
<i\  long  as  he's  acting. 

wir*  (as  BRITISH  i'koi  issor)  Maybe  I  should  talk 

to  the  natives,  (as  dancing  NATIVES)  Shoom 
boom  boo  ba!  Shoom  boomboo  ba 

si  win.     Andy! 

\M)V  (startled)  Oh\ 


/'//c  boy  suddenly  turns  off,  becoming  introverted 
Frustrated,  Slimier  Mores  at  his  son. 


awkward. 


STANLEY       Andy,  this  lias  to  stop.  Our  house  isn't  a  televi- 
sion station.  There  is  not  a  camera  in  that  wall. 


Andy  glances  over  at  the  wall.  llmm 
STANLEY 


(minx  to  eope)  Son  . . .  listen  to  me. 
It  isn't  healthy.  You  should  be  outside, 
playing  sports. 


9 


ANDY: 


STANLEY: 


ANDY: 

STANLEY: 


But  I've  got  a  sports  show.  Championship 
wrestling,  at  five. 

(he  blows  his  top)  You  know  that's  not  what  I 
meant!  Look,  I'm  gonna  put  my  foot  down!  No 
more  playing  alone.  You  wanna  perform,  you 
GOTTA  have  an  audience! 

(he  points  at  the  wall)  B-but  I  have  them. 

No!  That  is  NOT  an  audience!  That  is  PLASTER! 
An  audience  is  people  made  of  flesh!  They— live 
and  breathe!  Got  it?! 

Andy  thinks,  considering  his  options.  Tlren  he  nods. 

CUT  TO: 

INT.  KAUFMAN  HOUSE.  FAMILY  ROOM— LATER  THAT  DAY 

Baby  Carol  sits  in  her  crib.  Andy's  hands  suddenly  YANK  her  out. 

INT.  KAUFMAN  HOUSE.  ANDY'S  ROOM— DAY 

Andy  hurries  in  and  plops  Carol  down  on  the  floor.  She  dutifully 
sits  there,  deadpan. 

Andy  returns  to  the  center  of  the  room.  He  resumes  his  show. 

ANDY:  (as  KIDDIE-SHOW  HOST)  And  now,  boys  and 

girls!  It's  time  for  . . .  TV  Fun  Housel  (he  makes 


an  APPLAUSE  SOUND)  Hi,  everybody!  Are  you 
read)  fbl  a  sing-along?  I'll  say  the  animal,  and 
rou  make  the  sound!  O.K.  . . .  ?  O.K.!  (he  starts 
in  SING)  "Oh,  the  cow  goes  ..." 

( 'ami  stares,  unblinking.  Then— 

CAROL:  Moo. 

ANDY:  (he  smiles,  pleased)  "And  the  dog  goes  ..." 

CAROL:  WOOF! 

ANDY:  "And  the  cat  says  ..." 

DISSOLVE  TO: 

INT.  N.Y.  NIGHTCLUB— MID-70«— NIGHT 

TIGHT  on  ANDY,  now  GROWN  UP,  26  years  old,  still  performing 
the  song. 

DRUNK  AUDIENCE:  Meow!! 

WIDE— It's  a  small,  hip  New  York  nightclub. 

ANDY:  "And  the  bird  says  ..." 

DRUNK  AUDIENCE:  TWEET!! 

ANDY:  "And  the  lion  goes  ..." 

DRUNK  AUDIENCE:  ROAR!! 

ANDY:  "And  that's  the  way  it  goes!"  (he  grins)  Thank 

you.  Good-bye! 

Andy  waves  and  bows.  Tliere's  faint  scattered  applause. 

Andy  sighs.  An  irritated  MANAGER  steps  onstage.  He  shoots 
Andy  a  disgruntled  look,  then  takes  the  mike. 

MANAGER:  The  comedy  stylings  of  Andy  Kaufman,  ladies 
and  gentlemen! 

In  the  background,  Andy  starts  packing  up  his  props:  hand  puppets, 
conga  drums,  a  phonograph  . . .  it  all  goes  into  a  big  bulky  case. 


CUT  TO: 


INT.  N.Y.  NIGHTCLUB— LATER  THAT  NIGHT 


The  club  is  empty.  At  the  bar,  the  Manager  cleans  up.  Andy 
eagerly  comes  over.  Offstage,  his  presence  is  soft,  placid— his  voice 
barely  above  a  whisper. 

ANDY:  So,  Mr.  Besserman,  same  slot  tomorrow  . . .  ? 

MANAGER:  (awkward)  Eh,  I  dunno  . . .  Andy.  I'm  . . .  thinkin' 
of  letting  you  go  . . . 

ANDY:  You're  firing  me??  (beat)  You  don't  even  pay  me! 

MANAGER:  Look— I  don't  wanna  seem  insulting. 
But  . . .  your  act  is  like  amateur  hour: 
sing-alongs  . . .  puppets  . . .  playing 
records  . . . 

A  stunned  beat.  Andy  is  hurt. 

ANDY:  What  do  you  want?  "Take  my  wife,  please"? 

MANAGER:  Sure!  Comedy!  Make  jokes  about  the  traffic.  Do 
impressions.  Maybe  a  little  blue  material  . . . 


ANDY: 


/  don't  swear.  I— I  don't  do  what  everyone  else  does!    ; 


MANAGER:  Well,  everyone  else  gets  this  place  cookin!  Pal,  it's 
hard  for  me  to  move  booze  when  you're  singin' 
"Pop  Goes  the  Weasel." 

Andy  stares,  disheartened. 

JULY     1999 


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CtUfttfi/  'M.y.    ii'OBM*  J* 

MAN  \i  •  R    I'm  -  in     Vbu  re  flni  ihed  here 

ible  beat   and  then   indy  starts  crying.    The 

dumbfounded.  He  doesn't  know  what  to  do.  liars 

pitifully  down  Andy's  checks   The  Manager  is  con- 

tiall)  disoriented.  Shamed,  Andy  covers  his  face,  then 

runs  out   Silence  The  Manager  stares  after  him  . . .  having  no 

idea  what  just  happened. 

EXT.  N.Y.  NIGHTCLUB— NIGHT 

Sobbing,  Andy  Inasts  out  the  door.  He  steps  onto  the  sidewalk— 
and  IMMEDIATELY  STOPS  CRYING,  .hist  like  that. 

Andy  lifts  his  big  ease  and  starts  walking.  He  shakes  his  head  an- 
grily. He  turns  down  a  dark  street,  hurrying  alone  through  an 
unsavory  New  York  neighborhood. 


il   I    lo 


EXT.  N.Y.— NIGHT 


The  hnprov,  the  biggest  comedy  club  around.  People  are  lined 
up,  waiting. 

A  man  walks  wp-GEORGE  SHAPIRO,  a  Hollywood  talent  man- 
ager. George  is  old-school:  Bronx  accent,  schmooze,  and  a  hug 
. . .  but  with  a  surprising  sweetness  that  is  quite  disarming.  A 
DOORMAN  sees  him,  grins,  and  waves  George  in. 

INT.  N.Y.  IMPROV,  BAR— NIGHT 

The  bar  is  packed  with  COMICS  and  SHOWBIZ  TYPES.  A  few 
turn  and  smile— "George!"  "Hey,  George!"  George  shakes  a  couple 
hands,  whispers  to  someone  else,  then  drifts  into  the  . . . 

INT.  N.Y.  IMPROV,  SHOWROOM— NIGHT 

. . .  where  the  show's  in  progress.  Owner  BUDD  FRIEDMAN  sees 
George  and  gives  him  a  bear  hug.  Tlien  he  hustles  George  to  a 
table.  George  sits— and  gives  the  stage  his  undivided  attention.  Up 
there  is  a  WISEASS  COMIC. 

WISEASS  COMIC:  So  I'm  getting  my  mother-in-law  a  special 
Christmas  present:  a  pre-paid  funeral!  The  morti- 
cian asked  me  if  I  wanted  her  buried,  embalmed, 
or  cremated.  I  said,  "Make  it  all  three!  I'm  not 
takin  any  chances!"  (the  crowd  LAUGHS)  Thank 
you.  Good  night! 

The  comic  waves  and  exits.  APPLAUSE.  George  politely  claps. 
A  PIANO  PLAYER  jumps  in  with  an  upbeat  show  tune.  We 
think  there's  a  break  . . .  when  Andy  suddenly,  awkwardly  steps 
onstage.  He  is  in  character  as  Foreign  Man.  Pink  jacket,  tie, 
hair  slicked  back.  Frightened  like  a  deer  in  headlights.  He  puts 


down  his  big  case,  pulls  out  various  /unk,  and  arranges  it  on 

chain 

The  loom  hushes,  uncertain  as  to  who  the  hell  this  guy  is.  Andy 

tentatively  grabs  the  nuke.  The  stage  flight  is  agony. 

ANDY:  (OS  FOREIGN  MAN)  Now'.'  Now  ...? 

{looking  around)  Tank  you  veddy 
much.  I  am  very  happy  to  be  here.  I 
tink— this  is  a  very  beautiful  place.  But 
one  ting  I  do  not  like  is  too  much  traffic. 
Tonight  I  had  to  come  from,  eh,  and  the  freeway, 
it  was  so  much  traffic.  It  took  me  an  hour  and  a 
half  to  get  here! 

Andy  chuckles,  as  if  this  were  a  punch  line.  Silence.  The  crowd 
is  baffled. 

ANDY:  {as  FOREIGN  MAN)  But-talking  about  the  terri- 

ble things:  My  wife.  Take  my  wife,  please  take 
her. 

Yikes.  A  few  NERVOUS  LAUGHS.  Andy  gestures,  as  if  they  got 
the  joke. 

ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  No,  really,  I  am  only  foolink. 

I  love  my  wife  very  much.  But  she  don't  know 
how  to  cook.  You  know,  one  time,  she  make 
steak  and  mashed  potato.  Ehh,  and  the  night 
before,  she  make  spaghetti  and  meatballs.  Her 
cooking  is  so  bad  ...  is  terrible. 

People  are  embarrassed.  Some  avert  their  eyes.  A  couple  of  hip- 
sters laugh  mockingly.  George  leans  forward.  Andy  wipes  sweat 
from  his  brow. 

ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  Right  now,  I  would  like  to 

do  for  you  some  imitations.  So,  first,  I  would 
like  to  imitate  Archie  Bunker. 


(no  change  in  his  voice) 

"You  stupid,  everybody  ees  stupid! 
Ehh,  get,  get  out  of  my  chair,  Meat- 
head  ...  go  in  the,  eh,  Dingbat,  get 
into  the  kitchen,  making  the  food!  Ehh, 
everybody  ees  stupid!  I  don't  like  nobody,  ees  so 
stupid!"  Tank  you  veddy  much. 

(pleased,  he  proudly  bows) 

Now  I  would  like  to  imitate  Jimmy  Carter,  the 
president  of  the  United  States. 

(no  change  in  his  voice) 

"Hello,  I  am  Jimmy  Carter,  the  president  of  the 
United  States." 

Some  people  BOO  and  walk  out.  A  few  GIGGLE,  getting  in  the 
groove.  George  is  intrigued. 

ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  And  now  ...  I  would  like  to 

imitate  the  Elvis  Presley. 

A  woman  LAUGHS  caustically.  Andy  grins  stupidly,  then  turns 
his  back  to  us.  He  presses  "Play"  on  a  CASSETTE  RECORDER 
. . .  and  the  THEME  FROM  "2001"  starts  playing. 

Houselights  dim  dramatically.  With  a  flourish,  Andy  pulls  tape 
off  his  pants— revealing  rhinestones.  He  removes  his  pink  coat 
and  puts  on  a  white  jeweled  jacket. 

He  combs  his  hair. 

Then  he  brushes  his  hair. 


VANITY     FAIR 


JULY     1999 


Kick  derriere. 


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should  be. 


AlHNMt  .ItfJ&l?  MflfcttMM 

//(//■  to/nc  more 

tp  a  guitar,  strikes  a  pose  and  spins  around 

CONFIDENT.  SEXY  1  IP<  URJ    DEADON  PER]  I  «  I 

•u//  ./u./i    t£gos  Elvis  iniko  MUSIC  suddenly 
\lash    Ind)  Elvis  swaggers  stage  le/t  and  ///Acs  a  bow.  Then  he 
goes  stage  right  and  takes  a  bow    Then  he  returns  stage  left  for 
anothei  bow.  Musk  STOPS 

win  (as  i  ims)  Thank  you  very  much. 

Wow,   Flabbergasted,  people  APPLAUD.  This  man  is  Elvis. 
Suddenly   "BLUI  SUED1  SHOES"  guitar  kicks  in. 

win  (as ELVIS,  SINGING) 

"WELL,  IT'S  ONE  FOR  THE  MONEY 
TWO  FOR  THE  SHOW 
THREE  TO  GET  READY 
NOW  GO  CATS  GO!" 

ANGLE    GEORGE 


E  MONEY 


He  is  astonished.  George  cannot  quite  figure  out  what's  going  on 
. . .  but  he  wants  in. 

He  waves  Budd  over.  Budci  leans  down,  and  George  WHISPERS. 

GEORGE:      Psst.  What's  the  story  with  this  guy? 

BUDD:  I  think  he's  Lithuanian.  None  of  us  can  under- 

stand him. 

George  nods  admiringly. 

GEORGE:      He  does  a  hell  of  an  Elvis. 

CUT  TO: 

INT.  N.Y.  IMPROV,  BACKSTAGE— LATER  THAT  NIGHT 

Andy  is  packing  up  his  things.  He  very  methodically  folds  each 
item  of  clothing,  then  checks  the  creases. 

George  strolls  up. 

GEORGE:      Hey,  I  really  enjoyed  your  set. 

ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  Tank  you  veddy  much. 

GEORGE:      So  I  understand  you're  from  Lithuania? 

ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  No.  Caspian 

George  is  puzzled. 

GEORGE:      Caspiar?  I  haven't  heard  of  that. 


ANDY:  (as  FOREIGN  MAN)  It's  a  veddy  small  island  in 

de  Caspian  Sea.  (beat)  It  sunk. 

GEORGE:       Oh.  Hem.  I'm,  uh,  sorry,  (heat)  Well,  look, 

I'm   probably  out  of  my  mind    but   I     ^B 
think  you're  very  interesting.  If  you  ever 
need  representation  ...  we  should  talk. 

George  hands  him  a  BUSINESS  CARD.  Andy  reads  it-then  his 
eyes  pop.  He  DROPS  the  accent 

ANDY:  Mr.  Shapiro,  it's  an  honor!! 

George  realizes  it's  all  been  an  act.  He  laughs  heartily. 

GEORGE:      Caspiar,  huh?! 

CUT  TO: 

INT.  SOHO  HEALTH-FOOD  RESTAURANT— NIGHT 

Andy  and  George  sit  in  a  bohemian  health-food  restaurant.  Hippie 
waitresses  in  sandals  mill  around. 

Andy  and  George  are  trying  to  get  a  sense  of  each  other. 

ANDY:  You  see,  I  want  to  be  the  biggest  star  in  the  world. 

George  is  surprised  at  this  hubris. 

GEORGE:      People  love  . . .  comedians. 

ANDY:  I'm  not  a  comedian.  I  have  no  talent,  (he  shrugs) 

I'm  just  a  song-and-dance  man. 

George  looks  up  at  Andy— and  inexplicably  there  is  a  giant  MOIST 
BOOGER  hanging  from  Andy's  nostril.  George  cringes.  He  doesn't 
know  what  to  say.  A  waitress  brings  over  two  plates  of  awful  70s 
HEALTH  FOOD— beans,  sprouts,  seaweed.  Andy  beams.  George  is 
skeptical. 

Andy  pulls  out  a  little  Handi  Wipe  and  cleanses  his  hands.  Tlten  he 
starts  arranging  the  food  in  compulsive  little  piles:  Beans  in  pin- 
wheel  shapes.  Sprouts  in  piles. 

George  peers  at  the  bizarre  food  behavior. 

GEORGE:  You  show  a  lot  of  promise  . . .  but  ...  my  concern 
is  I  don't  know  where  to  book  you.  You're  not  a 
stand-up.  Your  act  doesn't  exactly  translate  to 
films.  It's  not  a  series  . . . 

ANDY:  I've  always  wanted  to  play  Carnegie  Hall. 

GEORGE:      Yeah,  ha-ha.  That's  funny. 

Andy  dips  his  silverware  in  the  water  glass.  Two  dunks,  then  he 
dries  it  with  his  napkin.  George  stares,  perplexed.  He  looks  back 
up— and  Andy's  booger  has  suddenly  switched  nostrils. 

Huh? 

ANDY:  See,  I  don't  want  easy  laughs  or  polite  applause! 

Any  bozo  can  get  those! 

Andy's  about  to  eat— but  first  bows  his  head  in  silent  prayer.  George 
raises  an  eyebrow.  Andy  snaps  his  head  back  up. 

ANDY:  I  want  gut  reactions!  I  want  that  audience  to  go 

through  an  experience.  They  love  me!  They  hate 
me!  They  walk  out-it's  all  GREAT! 

Andy  triumphantly  sticks  a  bean  in  his  mouth.  George  smiles. 

GEORGE:  You're  insane,  (beat)  But— you  also  might  be  brilliant. 
(sincere)  All  right,  Andy  . . .  let's  do  it. 

George  warmly  extends  his  hand.  Andy  slowly  smiles,  then  takes 
George's  hand.  Tlte  men  shake.  A  moment  of  supreme  importance.  O 

JULY      1999 


IM1H1 


:  ruby  red  is  a  dainty  color?] 
Feel  these  bones,  palfry     \  M 


m 


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uy, 


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L<'ll<)i  Jmm  L  \. 


TWO  ANGRY  ME 

The  five-year  game  of  chicken 
between  Disney  C.E.O. 
Michael  Eisner  and  his  forr 
lieutenant  Jeffrey  Katzenb 
has  come  to  this:  a  humiliatii 
courtroom  battle  hingir 
on  a  dead  witness.  Katzenbei 
will  get  a  hefty  cut  of  such 
Disney  hits  as  The  Lion  King, 
but  just  how  much  will 
it  cost  both  men? 

BY  KIM  MASTERS 


f*V 


/-* 


A 


KATZ  AND  MOUSE 
Hollywood  has  been 
riveted  by  the  legal  drama 
in  which  Disney  chairman 
Michael  Eisner,  top, 
and  his  longtime  associate 
Jeffrey  Katzenberg  are 
clashing  over  a  bonus 
package  potentially  worth 
hundreds  of  millions. 


■ 


Jfik 


t  was  the  spectacle  that  many  in  the  entertainment  indus- 
try never  thought  they'd  get  to  see.  After  five  years  of  legal 
backing-and-forthing,  Hollywood's  own  trial  of  the  centu- 
ry got  under  way  in  earnest  this  spring.  If  there  had  been 
a  poll,  virtually  anyone  who  rates  a  reserved  parking 
space  at  a  studio  would  have  said  that  Katzenberg  v.  Disney 
would  be  settled  at  the  last  minute.  And  that  seemed  more  than 
a  fair  bet,  precisely  because  of  such  embarrassing  evidence  as 
the  notes  that  celebrity  biographer  Tony  Schwartz  diligently 
typed  into  his  laptop  while  co-writing  Work  in  Progress,  the  1998 
autobiography  of  Disney  chairman  and  C.E.O.  Michael  Eisner. 
Thanks  to  Schwartz— and  to  Eisner's  inexplicable  impulse  to 
write  an  autobiography  while  sitting  as  chairman  of  a  major  pub- 
lic company— the  keeper  of  the  Mickey-and-Minnie  flame  was 
forced  to  acknowledge  in  front  of  God,  man,  and  an  assem- 
blage of  slack-jawed  reporters  that  he  had  once  uttered  a  rather 
inelegant  phrase  in  a  fit  of  anger  at  his  former  longtime  asso- 
ciate Jeffrey  Katzenberg.  He  also  said— in  what  may  be  one 
of  the  least  credible  pieces  of  sworn  testimony  ever  given— 
that  he  didn't  know  whether  he  or  Disney  had  paid 
Schwartz,  who  toiled  for  almost  10  years.  (Disney  won't 
comment,  and  Schwartz  says  he  doesn't  know,  either.) 
Though  Eisner's  book  was  relatively  sanitized, 
Schwartz's  research  notes  offer  some  fascinating  details 
that  haven't  been  discussed  during  the  trial.  For  exam- 
ple, there  were  hints  about  exactly  when,  in  his  stun- 
ningly successful  19-year  working  relationship  with 
Katzenberg,  Eisner  began— as  he  now  famously  put 
it— to  "hate  the  little  midget." 

Katzenberg  is  suing  for  a  mega-bonus  that  he 
says  was  owed  to  him  after  he  ended  his  10-year  run 

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i     >         itudio  hi  1994. 
ol   in  trial  Ik-  won  a  cru- 
den  thi   court  ruled  thai 
ii  ached  ins  contract  and 
iu  i  pay  into  rest  on  whatevei  be 
i  in-  exact  figure  will  he  deter- 
mined ni  the  second  phase  of  the  trial    it' 
Disney  doesn't  end  this  debacle  and  settle. 

A  subject  still  untouched  in  the  court- 
room is  the  infamous  state-of-the-industry 
memo  that  Kal/enherg  had  written  a  few 
years  before  his  departure.  It  is  a  document 
well  remembered  by  anyone  in  the  enter- 
tainment business  who  is  old  enough  to 
shave.  The  memo  was  meant  to  be  a  decla- 
ration of  purpose,  an  effort  to  get  Disney— 
whose  live-action  films  were  going  from 
bad  {Thking  Care  of  Business)  to  worse  (Mr. 
Destiny)— back  on  track.  But  the  memo  it- 
self was  a  flop,  widely  seen  as  a  pretentious 
piece  of  self-promotion.  Perhaps  only  now 
is  the  magnitude  of  Katzenberg's  error  be- 
coming evident. 

The  funny  thing  is,  Katzenberg  actually 
seemed  to  have  been  imitating  his  brilliant 
boss,  Eisner.  Years  earlier,  when  he  was  part 
of  a  now  legendary  dynasty  at  Paramount, 
Eisner  had  written  a  similar  screed.  His 
memo,  replete  with  sports  metaphors,  sug- 
gested that  Paramount  had  to  re-evaluate 
its  strategies,  and  that  making  an  expensive 
picture  such  as  Warren  Beatty's  Reds  might 
be  "not  worthy  of  the  risk."  Katzenberg's 
memo,  replete  with  sports  metaphors,  said 
that  Beatty's  1990  detective  picture,  Dick 
Tracy,  had  proved  so  expensive  and  time- 
consuming  that  when  the  next  such  vehi- 
cle came  along  the  company  should  "so- 
berly conclude  that  it's  not  a  project  we 
should  choose  to  get  involved  in." 

Eisner's  memo  was  discreetly  distrib- 
uted to  the  Paramount  board;  Katzen- 
berg's was  "leaked"  all  over  town— to  the 
point  where  it  was  reprinted  in  Variety. 
In  the  Schwartz  notes,  Eisner  explains 
exactly  how  he  responded  to  Katz- 
enberg's stunt,  as  he  termed  it. 
"[He]  was  so  proud  of  it  ...  he 

wanted  me  to  read  it [He] 

thought  it  was  so  brilliant,"  Eis- 
ner fumed  in  the  notes.  "So  I 
read  it  and  say  Jeffrey,  this  is  dyna- 
mite, putting  down  a  lot  of  actors. 
It  is  also  self-serving.  I  wrote  for  Para- 
mount board.  There  were  7  copies. 
And  I  threw  them  out." 

If,  as  Katzenberg's  attorneys  argue, 
Disney's  refusal  to  pay  Katzenberg  his 
bonus  has  been  driven  by  the  "personal 
animus"  of  Eisner,  these  notes— coupled 
with  the  "midget"  remark,  which  also  comes 
from  Schwartz's  files— suggest  some  hostility. 
There  may,  however,  have  been  subtle  but 
powerful  reasons  for  Eisner's  outrage.  When 
he  wrote  his  memo  to  the  Paramount 
board,  it  was  perceived  within  the  company 


as  a  pi. in  tO  raiM  Ins  own  profile:  at  the 
time,  be  WHS  in  the  shadow  of  Studio  chair- 
man Barry  Diller,  Eisner's  memo  was  seen 

as  an  elloit  to  wrest  lull  from  Frank  Man- 
CUSO,  who  was  then  Parainount's  powerful 
bead  of  distribution  (and  such  a  natural  en- 
emy of  Eisner's  that  he  was  known  in-house 
as  "the  Sicilian").  The  memo  failed:  Mancu- 
so  got  the  top  job,  and  Eisner  got  the  gate. 
In  1991,  when  Eisner  saw  that  Katzen- 
berg had  written  a  memo  of  his  own,  per- 
haps he  got  a  notion  about  just  how  ambi- 
tious Katzenberg  might  be.  It  was  right 
around  this  time,  trial  records  seem  to  indi- 
cate, that  Eisner  began  to  mull  the  possible 
repercussions  of  Katzenberg's  departure. 
On  the  witness  stand,  Eisner  denied  hating 
Katzenberg.  But  he  also  acknowledged  that 
he  had  told  Schwartz  that  he,  Eisner,  was 
the  "cheerleader,"  while  Katzenberg  was 
merely  "the  end  of  my  pom-pom." 

[ven  before  he  gave  his  unforgettable  tes- 
timony, Eisner  was  having  a  rather  bad 
week.  Disney's  stock  was  dragging. 
Earnings  were  down  41  percent  in  the  sec- 
ond quarter,  and  projections  for  the  im- 


"He's  wearing  a 

■      ■     ■  ■■  ■ 


0  w 

artist  said  of  Eisner, 
"and  hasn't  removed  the 
stitching  from  his  vents." 


THE  WEALTHY  WORLD  OF  DISNEY 

Photographed  in  June  1986, 

Eisner  and  Katzenberg  would  soon  turn 

Disney  into  the  No.  1  studio. 


mediate  future  weren't  good.  The  Ana- 
heim Mighty  Ducks,  a  Disney  franchise, 
had  been  blown  out  of  the  N.H.L.  playoffs 
in  lour  straight  games.  And  at  trial  Eisner 
was  having  his  perennial  sartorial  difficul- 
ties, which  date  back  to  his  tenure  as  a 
rumpled  junior  executive  at  ABC.  Produc- 
er Gary  Pudney— one  of  Eisner's  first  su- 
pervisors- once  told  me  that  the  network 
bosses  constantly  pleaded  with  Pudney  to 
"do  something  about  him!  Fluff  him  up!" 
Many  years  later,  after  attending  the  1997 
shareholders'  meeting,  New  York  Times  col- 
umnist Maureen  Dowd  tartly  suggested 
that  Eisner  needed  to  address  the  matter  of 
his  socks.  And  during  a  break  in  the  Katz- 
enberg proceedings,  one  of  the  courtroom 
artists  gazed  upon  Eisner  with  a  look  of 
shock.  "He's  wearing  a  new  jacket,"  she 
whispered  with  a  grimace,  "and  he  hasn't 
removed  the  stitching  from  his  vents!" 

So  maybe  clothes  don't  make  the  man 
after  all.  Despite  Disney's  woes  and  Eis- 
ner's socks,  Forbes  had  just— for  the  second 
time— anointed  him  the  highest-paid  chief 
executive  in  America.  By  earning  $589  mil- 
lion in  fiscal  1998,  Eisner  beat  out  the  runner- 
up,  CBS  president  and  chief  operating 
officer  Mel  Karmazin,  by  almost  $400 
million.  There  may  be  some  solace  in  that. 

In  a  literal  way— as  opposed  to  the  meta- 
phorical way  in  which  Katzenberg's  legal 
team  would  like  to  present  it— Katzenberg 
v.  Disney  is  a  battle  of  small-versus-large. 
The  bantam  Katzenberg  is  represented  by 
Bert  Fields,  the  renowned  attorney  to  the 
rich  and  famous  (who  also,  I  should  add, 
is  representing  me  in  a  dispute  with 
Broadway  Books,  which  recently  can- 
celed a  book  I  have  been  writing  about 
the  Disney  empire).  Fields  is  not  tall,  and 
he's  thin  to  the  point  of  gauntness.  Disney 
has  a  six-foot-three  chief  executive,  and  al- 
though its  lead  counsel,  Lou  Meisin- 
ger,  is  hardly  obese,  he  has 
complained  that  he  looks  fat 
on  television. 
Eisner  has  put  in  only  one 
courtroom  appearance.  Katzen- 
berg has  showed  up  day  after 
day,  flanked  by  his  wife,  Marilyn 
(a  low-key  dresser  who  favors  flats), 
and  Helene  Hahn,  a  top  Dream- 
Works executive.  With  Steven  Spiel- 
berg handling  about  five  movies  a 
year  and  Katzenberg  tied  up  in  litiga- 
tion for  weeks  on  end,  one  might  won- 
der who's  minding  the  DreamWorks 
store  this  spring.  No  Hollywood  insider 
can  readily  imagine  the  third  Dream- 
Works partner,  David  Geffen,  doing  all 
the  heavy  lifting.  At  least  Katzenberg,  the 
poorest  of  the  DreamWorks  trio,  knows 
that  when  the  trial  ends  sometime  this 
summer  Disney  is  going  to  write  him  a 


VANITY     FAIR 


JULY     1999 


M 


Disaronno  Originale. 


Italian.  Sensual.  Warm 


Light  A  Fire 


WG1SALI 


i     ii     to  Dis- 
\>.  i  I  I 

1        may  be 
that, 

Klefl  Disney  on  bitter 
-   bi  ing  passed  over 
foi  the  number-two  job  in  1994. 
[Wo  years  later  hr  sued,  seeking 
about  $250  million.  He  contended 
that  Disney  owed  him  a  lump-sum 
payment  representing  2  percent  of  fu- 
ture profits  from  all  the  projects  that  he 
had  put  into  production  during  lib 
tenure  as  studio  chairman. 

Without  reams  of  financial  informa- 
tion and  the  testimony  of  expert  wit- 
nesses, you  can't  even  begin  to  do  the 
math.  But  the  final  tally,  as  they  say 
in  Toontown,  is  bound  to  be  a  lot  of 
simoleons.  Included  will  be  a  cut 
from  live-action  hits  such  as  Crim- 
son Tide  and  The  Santa  Clause, 
plus  a  percentage  from  animated 
hits,  including  The  Little  Mermaid 
and  The  Lion  King.  And  while  there  was 
certainly  a  string  of  astonishing  live-action 
flops  during  the  last  years  of  Katzenberg's 
tenure  at  the  studio  (Billy  Bathgate,  Blame 
It  on  the  Bellboy),  the  animated  pictures 
were  such  mighty  engines  of  profit  that 
they  erased  the  sins  of  a  multitude  of 
Cabin  Boys. 

Katzenberg  has  argued  that  he's  enti- 
tled to  a  piece  of  every  Disney  lunchbox, 
plush  toy,  and  T-shirt  sold  related  to  his 
films  and  television  shows— as  well  as  a 
share  in  the  future  use  of  his  programs  in 
technologies  that  haven't  even  been  in- 
vented yet.  At  first,  Disney  contended 
that  Katzenberg  wasn't  owed  a  nickel. 
He  had  forfeited  the  money,  the  compa- 
ny insisted,  by  opting  to  leave  in  1994  in- 
stead of  staying  until  his  contract  ex- 
pired, in  1996.  But  on  the  eve  of  trial,  in 
November  1997,  Disney  agreed  to  pay 
Katzenberg  72.5  percent  of  his  final  lump- 
sum bonus.  Disney  has  already  reported- 
ly forked  over  $117  million,  apparently  as 
a  kind  of  down  payment.  Now  retired 
judge  Paul  Breckenridge  Jr.  has  the 
daunting  task  of  figuring  out  what  2  per- 
cent of  all  those  movies,  television  shows, 
Broadway  musicals,  and  Simba  toys  is 
actually  worth. 

In  court,  Disney's  attorneys  have  sug- 
gested that  not  only  is  Katzenberg 
"greedy"  but  he  has  also  been  a  credit 
grabber  about  the  animated  hits.  All 
that,  however,  is  beside  the  point.  Disney 
has  already  acknowledged  that  Katzen- 
berg will  be  paid.  The  first  phase  of  the 
trial,  which  ended  in  mid-May,  involved 
what  may  appear  to  be  a  lot  of  hairsplit- 
ting. But  they  were  multimillion-dollar 
hairs.  Must  the  studio  pay  Katzenberg 

VANITY     FAIR 


suggested 
that  Katzenberg  forget  about 
the  final  lump-sum  payment, 

Katzenberg  testified, 
"[I]  rejected  it  out  of  hand." 


Top,  Eisner,  vice-chairman  Roy  Disney, 

and  president  and  C.0.0.  Frank  Wells 

in  1987.  Above,  Katzenberg 

and  Wells  in  Los  Angeles,  1986. 


for  all  T-shirts,  plush  toys,  and  other 
Disney-manufactured  items  as  well  as 
products  licensed  to  companies  such  as 
Mattel?  (Yes.)  How  should  inflation  be 
applied  when  calculating  the  future  value 
of  Katzenberg's  "product"?  (Still  to  be 
determined.) 

These  are  not  the  biggest-ticket  ques- 
tions, but  allegations  that  Disney  may 
have  hidden  some  of  the  money  may 
prompt  actors  and  filmmakers  who  had 
pieces  of  various  Disney  films  to  take  an- 
other look  at  their  profit  statements.  And 
at  least  one  of  these  issues  has  already 
had  major  repercussions.  From  the  outset, 
Disney  has  stood  firm  on  one  point:  what- 
ever the  sum  that  Disney  would  have  to 


pay,   the   company   wouldn't 
throw  in  the  interest.  Katzen- 
berg claimed  that  he  was  owed 
interest  dating  back  to   1996, 
when  the  lump-sum  payment  was 
actually  due  to  him.  Disney  said  it 
had  agreed  to  pay  Katzenberg,  but 
never  admitted  that  it  had  breached 
•     his  contract-  and  therefore  owed  him 
no  interest. 

That  opened  the  door  for  Katzenberg's 
lawyers  to  try  the  breach-of-contract  issue 
that  Disney  had,  in  theory,  put  behind  it 
in  1997,  when  the  company  first  agreed  to 
pay  Katzenberg.  Had  it  not  been  for 
this  sticking  point,  plenty  of  potentially 
damaging    evidence— including   the 
"midget"  quote  and  various  allega- 
tions of  fraud— would  not  have 
been  raised.  Considering  the  stakes 
involved— and  the  brevity  with  which 
the  court  dispatched  Disney's  position 
on  this  point— the  10  percent  annual  in- 
terest on  Katzenberg's  final  judgment 
seems  an  odd  price  for  Disney  to  have  set 
on  its  own  reputation. 

1 1  nderlying  the  tedious  legalities  of  the 
1 1  trial  is  the  compelling  story  of  how  two 
U  of  the  entertainment  industry's  most 
famous  players  came  to  this  extraordi- 
nary pass.  It  begins  in  1984,  when  Katz- 
enberg sat  down  at  the  Beverly  Hills 
Hotel  with  Eisner  and  his  number-two, 
Frank  Wells,  to  discuss  Katzenberg's 
original  Disney  contract.  Eisner  and  Katz- 
enberg had  been  together  for  several  suc- 
cessful years  at  Paramount.  Then  Eisner 
got  the  top  job  at  Disney,  and  Wells,  a 
former  senior  executive  at  Warner  Bros., 
became  president  and  chief  operating 
officer. 

The  late  Frank  Wells  is  a  figure  of 
some  mystery  in  this  drama.  The  tall,  pa- 
trician executive  had  recently  returned 
from  his  Seven  Summits  expedition— an 
attempt  to  become  the  first  person  to 
climb  the  tallest  mountain  on  each  conti- 
nent. Although  an  inexperienced  climber, 
he  nearly  pulled  it  off,  missing  only  Ever- 
est. He  was  a  man  of  considerable  charm 
and  guile.  Perhaps  as  challenging  as  Ever- 
est, his  friends  would  later  say,  was  the 
task  of  managing  Eisner,  the  impulsive 
chief  executive  who  provided  the  creative 
spark  that  Disney  so  desperately  needed. 
In  those  days,  Disney  was  a  tattered, 
limping  company  that  wasn't  even  count- 
ed among  the  major  studios.  It  had  no 
shows  on  network  television.  Its  once 
vaunted  animation  division  was  in  the 
umpteenth  year  of  working  on  the  dark 
and  doomed  sorcery  tale  The  Blaek  Caul- 
dron. Nothing  from  its  priceless  library 
had  been  released  on  home  video. 

At  deal  time,  Katzenberg  asked  for  some- 

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tin  ■  the  big  sto  '•<  option 
nd  Will ,  had  de- 
Wells  said  the  Dis- 

i foi  that,  Instead, 

promised  2  percenl  of 
I  from    all  forms  of  exploitation" 

i  thai  he  would  put  into  pro- 
ductioi  i  [e'd  get  2  percent  of  each  year's 
profits  if  there  were  any,  and  when  he  fi- 
nalls  left,  he'd  get  a  lump  sum  that  would 
cove]  the  future  value  of  everything  that 
he  had  done  at  Disney.  According  to  Katz- 
enberg's  testimony,  Wells  described  it  as 
an  "annuity"  for  Katzenberg's  twins  (who 
were  then  18  months  old,  but  are  now  old 
enough  to  drive). 

[verything  went  swimmingly  for  a  while. 
Eisner  and  Wells  oversaw  one  of  the 
most  dazzling  turnarounds  in  the  histo- 
ry of  business,  building  Disney  into  a  $5.8 
billion  corporation  by  1990.  (If  you  had 
invested  $58  in  Disney  stock  in  1984,  it 
would  be  worth  more  than  $1,400  today.) 
The  studio  started  to  belt  out  hits  such  as 
Ruthless  People  and  Down  and  Out  in  Bev- 
erly Hills.  By  1988,  Disney  had  become 
the  No.  1  studio,  and  the  company's  oper- 
ating income  had  shot  from  $242  million 
to  more  than  $884  million.  Disney's  ac- 
counting is  conservative,  however,  and 
Katzenberg  discovered  that  it  was  going 


to  be  a  long  tunc  before  lie  saw  any  real 
money  from  that  2  percent  bonus. 

According  to  documents  filed  in  the 
case,  Katzenberg  was  told  that  his  division 
was  running  in  the  red  through  1988.  In 
October  of  that  year.  Wells  addressed 
Katzenberg's  disappointment  in  a  letter. 
Noting  that  Katzenberg's  optimistic  expec- 
tations had  been  "perfectly  reasonable" 
given  "the  enormous  success"  of  the  stu- 
dio, Wells  urged  patience.  He  added  that 
the  final  payout  was  likely  to  be  big.  As 
he  wrote,  "Many  of  these  pictures  still 
have  substantial  revenues  forthcoming  . . . 
and  of  course,  will  continue  'forever.'"  The 
company  was  expecting  to  reap  at  least 
$100  million  from  the  television  series  The 
Golden  Girls  alone,  he  said.  (This  letter,  in- 
cidentally, was  copied  to  Eisner  with  a 
handwritten  note  from  Wells:  "Probably 
worth  a  quick  read.") 

Meanwhile,  Wells  had  been  working 
hard  to  renew  Katzenberg's  contract,  which 
would  expire  in  1990.  Eisner  wanted  to 
retain  his  services  through  1996.  The 
company  offered  to  pay  for  Katzenberg's 
Charles  Gwathmey-designed  beach  house 
and  proposed  to  give  him  a  bundle  of 
stock  options.  But  Wells  suggested  that 
Katzenberg  forget  about  that  lump-sum 
payment.  "[I]  rejected  it  out  of  hand," 
Katzenberg  testified.  "I  was  not  going  to 


give  up  ...  what  had  been  the  most  im- 
portant element  of  my  original  deal."  Katz- 
enberg did  offer  to  take  70  percent  of 
whatever  Eisner  would  get.  As  Disney 
stock  soared,  it  was  apparent  that  Eisner's 
compensation  would  be  titanic.  (Accord- 
ing to  those  who  calculate  the  Forbes  800 
annual  rankings,  Eisner  has  collected  close 
to  a  billion  dollars  since  he  took  over.)  But 
Wells  rejected  the  idea  of  tying  one  execu- 
tive's compensation  to  another's. 

Finally,  according  to  Katzenberg,  the 
parties  agreed  to  leave  much  of  the 
1984  deal  intact— including  the  big  fi- 
nal payout.  Katzenberg  won  a  key  con- 
cession: the  right  to  opt  out  of  his  con- 
tract by  1994— two  years  earlier  than  Eis- 
ner had  wanted.  In  notes  of  a  June  19, 
1988,  conversation  with  Katzenberg's  at- 
torney, Wells  wrote  in  his  all  but  indeci- 
pherable scrawl  that  the  final  bonus— still 
apparently  part  of  Katzenberg's  pack- 
age—was "a  tremendous  concept,"  and 
that  the  payout  "should  increase  by  big 
amount"  in  the  coming  years. 

Several  subsequent  documents  seem  to 
confirm  that  this  was  the  arrangement  to 
which  the  parties  had  agreed.  On  July  1, 
1988,  Wells  sent  a  deal  memo  to  Katzen- 
berg reflecting  an  "ongoing  participation 
in  the  2  percent  bonus."  And  there  was 


that  October  letter,  copied  to  Eisner,  which 
assured  Katzenberg  that  he  could  expect 
handsome  future  bonuses  that  would  con- 
tinue "forever." 

Wells  also  briefed  board  member  Irwin 
Russell,  who  was  then  a  member  of  the 
compensation  committee,  on  Katzenberg's 
deal.  Notes  taken  by  both  Wells  and 
Russell  reflect  that  Katzenberg  would 
lose  a  third  of  the  money  for  the  beach 
house  (as  well  as  some  stock  options) 
if  he  decided  to  leave  in   1994.  But 
Wells's  notes  of  the  conversation  state: 
"2  percent  bonus  continues."  Russell's 
notes  seem  to  track  those  taken  by  Wells. 
He  wrote  the  word  "bonus"  and  then 
"continuation]  of  original  deal." 

Katzenberg,  meanwhile,  was  about  to 
release  Tlw  Little  Mermaid  and  was  work- 
ing on  Beauty  and  the  Beast  and  Aladdin. 
The  size  of  the  final  bonus— and  the  stakes 
involved— began  to  grow. 

I  t  trial  there  were  three  key  witnesses— 

II  described  by  Fields  as  "the  three 
/ 1  faces  of  Disney"— all  of  whom  disput- 
ed that  Katzenberg  was  entitled  to  re- 
ceive the  bonus  that  Disney  has  already 
agreed  to  pay.  Eisner  asserted  that  in 
1988  Wells  was  constantly  assuring  him 
that  Katzenberg's  final  bonus  would  nev- 
er be  worth  anything.  In  one  deposition, 


Katzenberg's  account 

of  Eisner's  conduct, 

Disney  said,  revealed 

"a  conspiratorial  mentality 

that  would  make  Oliver 

Stone  proud." 


Eisner  was  asked  why  Wells  would  have 
told  Katzenberg  in  writing  that  the  same 
bonus  should  "increase  by  a  big  amount." 

"He  [was]  selling,"  Eisner  replied. 
"Seems  to  me." 

Earlier,  Irwin  Russell  had  taken  the 
stand.  Why  did  his  notes  from  his  1988 
conversation  with  Wells  suggest  that  Katz- 
enberg's bonus  would  continue  even  if  he 
left  in  1994?  Simple  error,  he  swore.  Ner- 
vously chewing  his  glasses,  Russell  said 
that  he  had  forgotten  to  write  the  word 
"loses"  before  the  word  "bonus."  While 
Katzenberg's  side  argued  that  this  testi- 
mony seemed  hard  to  believe,  it  certain- 
ly put  Russell  on  the  same  page  as  Eis- 
ner—which is  just  as  well,  since  Russell  is 


also  Eisner's  longtime  personal  attorney. 
Eisner  testified  that  despite  the  various 
notes  and  deal  memos  that  seemed  to 
support  Katzenberg's  contention  that  he 
was  still  entitled  to  his  final  bonus  if  he 
left  in  1994,  there  was  no  such  agree- 
ment. Sometime  during  Katzenberg's 
1988  contract  negotiations,  Eisner 
said,  he  had  instructed  Wells  that 
Katzenberg  could  not  get  that  final  2 
percent  payout  unless  he  stayed  until  1996. 
Eisner  was  fuzzy  on  dates  but  insisted  that 
Wells  would  never  have  countermanded 
his  instructions  in  this  or  any  other  re- 
gard. Further,  Eisner  said  that  sometime 
during  this  period  he  had  had  a  chat  with 
Katzenberg,  who  agreed  to  give  up  the 
bonus  if  he  left.  Katzenberg  denied  that 
the  conversation  ever  took  place. 

So  now  Eisner  had  put  himself  in  the  po- 
sition of  having  insisted  that  Katzenberg 
be  stripped  of  a  supposedly  worthless 
bonus.  It  seems  like  a  strange  call,  but 
Eisner  said  emphatically  that  he  had  made 
it.  There  was  one  scrap  of  evidence  that 
seemed  to  support  his  version  of  events. 

Katzenberg's  side  conceded  that  the  fi- 
nal 1988  contract  contains  an  "ambiguous" 
provision— one  that  Wells  never  pointed 
out  in  correspondence  with  Katzenberg's 
attorney.  While  setting  out  a  schedule  for 


12 


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GOLD  HAMPTON  MlLLEiS 


ERCIER 


GENEVE  -1830 


SHREVE  &  CO. 


S\\  IHWHMOyllWHIKNIMI    INSJ 

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kNFORD  SHOPPING  CENTER.  I'Al.o  U.T0  ((-SO)  527-; 


LHIri  liojn  L.  \. 


bonus,  the  provi- 
li  i  ii  hi  departed  in  1994  Dis- 
ci to  p. is  Katzenb 
.   tpecl  "i  years 
•  sptembei    JO,   1994, 
which  is  payable  aftei  such  date 
i>\  company." 

Disney  contended  thai  the  Ian 
guag(  restricts  the  bonus  to  profits 
realized  before  1994  and  effectively  elimi 
nates  the  lump-sum  payment  based  on 
future  income   Fields  countered  that  the 
provision  is  murky  to  the 
point  of  meaninglessness 
The  main   letters  and 
notes    from  Wells  to 
Katzenberg's  lawyer 
from  Wells  to  the 
board    make   it 
clear,  he  successful- 
ly argued,  that  Katz- 
enberg  would  not  for 
feit   his  bonus  if  he 
opted  to  leave  in  1994.        WJ! 

Fields  concluded  that  ^ 
someone  had  to  be  lying.   ' 
Either  Wells  had  tried  to 
pull  a  fast  one  by  slipping  un 
favorable  language  into  Katzen- 
berg's contract— which  would  be  "garden- 
variety,  half-truth  fraud"— or  the  pro- 
vision was  never  meant  to  strip  Katz- 
enberg  of  his  bonus.  (The  court  found 
no  evidence  of  fraud.)  Wells,  who  died 
in  1994,  was  spared  the  awkwardness 
of  testifying  on  this  point.  And  while 
Fields  chose  to  focus  on  the  "personal 
animus"  of  Eisner  toward  Katzenberg, 
perhaps  the  story  is  more  complicat- 
ed than  that.   Maybe  Wells  did  slip 
ambiguous  language  into  the 
contract  to  cover  himself.  Could 
Wells  have  told  Eisner  that  he 
had  taken  care  of  Katzenberg 
while  simultaneously  assuring 
Katzenberg  that  he  was  taking 
care  of  Eisner?  Some  of  those 
familiar  with  the  ways  of  Wells 
would  expect  nothing  less. 

Meanwhile,  Katzenberg's  annu- 
al 2  percent  share  of  Disney 
profit  from  his  projects  began 
to  pick  up  considerably.  In  1990, 
stoked  by  The  Little  Mermaid  and 
Pretty  Woman,  he  collected  a  $3.9 
million  bonus.  He  earned  $4.9  million  in 
1993  and  $7.1  million  in  1994.  As  Kat- 
zenberg's annual  payments  grew,  Disney 
started  its  Project  Snowball— an  effort  to 
calculate  the  ultimate  value  of  Kat- 
zenberg's final  bonus.  A  former  Disney 
employee  named  Cheryl  Fellows  testi- 
fied that  this  project  was  to  remain  con- 
fidential—"very  confidential"— even  from 
Katzenberg. 


TOONTOWN  U.S.A. 
From  above:  Simba  from 
The  Lion  King,  Ariel  from 
The  Little  Mermaid,  Aladdin 
from  Aladdin,  and  the  Beast 
and  Belle  from  Beauty 
and  the  Beast.  Overseen  by 
Katzenberg,  these  animated 
features  grossed  more  than 
$770  million  for  Disney. 


"I  don't  have  to 
read  the  contract,  Frank," 

Katzenberg's  lawyer 
angrily  told  Wells.  "It's  not 
the  deal  that  we  made." 


1 


Fellows  said  that  she  made  up  the 
Dame  Project  Snowball  simply  to  de- 
scribe the  ever  growing  amount  of  work 
thai  she  would  have  to  do.  When  Eis- 
ner look  the  witness  stand,  he  stated 
as  he  had  in  an  earlier  deposition 
that  he  had  never  heard  of  Project 
Snowball.  But  Katzenberg's  evidence 
included  a  memorandum  that  Wells 
had  sent  to  Eisner,  with  the  title 
"Project  Snowball"  written  on  every 
page.  In  that  memo,  Wells  took  the 
position  that  Disney  could  "volun- 
tarily" pay  Katzenberg  if  he  left 
in  1994. 
Disney  contended  that  Project  Snow- 
ball was  simply  an  effort  to  keep  track  of 
a  complicated  accounting  process— and 
that  Katzenberg  should  have  been  glad 
that  it  was  kept  secret.  Katzenberg's  law- 
yers tried  to  paint  a  darker  picture.  Proj- 
ect Snowball,  they  said,  showed  that  Dis- 
ney had  become  aware  that  Katzenberg's 
final  bonus  would  be  huge.  They  suggest- 
ed that  the  company  was  very  quietly 
looking  for  an  escape  hatch.  One  solution 
was  to  argue  that  Katzenberg  wouldn't 
get  the  money  if  he  left  in  1994.  And 
then,  by  implication,  all  Eisner  had  to  do 
was  make  sure  that  Katzenberg  was  gone 
in  a  timely  manner.  In  court,  Disney 
described  Katzenberg's  arguments 
as  having  "a  conspiratorial  mentali- 
ty that  would  make  Oliver  Stone 
proud."  In  his  May  19  ruling,  Brecken- 
ridge  did  not  address  the  question  of 
Project  Snowball. 

When  Katzenberg  won  the  right  to 
leave  Disney  in  1994,  it  certainly  was 
not  an  option  that  anyone— not  Eis- 
ner, not  Wells,  not  even  Katzenberg  him- 
self—seriously imagined  he  would  exercise. 
Katzenberg  was  so  closely  identified  with 
Disney  that  it  seemed  he  would  have  to 
be  surgically  removed.  Besides,  he  had 
fallen  in  love  with  animation.  Thanks  to 
Who  Framed  Roger  Rabbit  and  The 
Little  Mermaid,  which  grossed  a 
combined  $237  million,  Disney 
seemed  to  be  his  natural  habitat. 
But  he  had  a  large  appetite.  In  April 
1993,  an  increasingly  restless  Katzenberg 
asked  to  see  how  much  his  2  percent 
would  be  worth  if  he  did  leave  the  follow- 
ing year.  This  was  a  rattle  of  the  saber. 
Katzenberg  was  asking  for  more  responsi- 
bility, and  Eisner  couldn't  figure  out 
how  to  satisfy  him.  So  he  hinted,  with 
little  subtlety,  that  he  might  leave  in 
1994  after  all. 
[        A  month  later,  Disney's  lawyers  re- 
sponded with  a  letter  expressing  the 
company  position  that  if  Katzenberg 
left  in   1994  he  could  forget  about 
collecting  his  final  bonus.  Katzen- 


VANITY     FAIR 


J  U  I  Y     19  9  9 


& 


ITS  NOT  TV  ITS  HBO 


See  il  right  after  Lethal  Weapon    I   at  9:00  I'M  IT/IM 

.hbo.tom    f  1999  Home  Box  Offite.  a  Division  of  Time  Warner  Entertainment  Company,  LP.    All  rights  reserved.  >  Service  marks  of  Time  Warner  Entertainment  Company  l.P. 


H'U-:t---Irom  L  \. 


i'i     i   llils  was  .in  01  roi 

!  i  vV<  Us,  who  be  clainu  said  hi 

i  i  thi    mattei    So  fat 
aid,  the  discussion  was 
i      assumed  thai  Wells 
igreeing  thai  the 
threatened  forfeiture  had  been 
"a  mistake. ' 

In   August,  however,  Disney  fol- 
lowed with  a  letter  asking  Katzenberg 
Id  state  his  intentions.  Katzenberg,  who 
li.uln  I  heard  hack  from  Wells,  asked  his 
lawyer,  Arthur  Emil,  to  get  clarification 
ol  Disney's  position  on  his  bonus.  Wells 
told  l'tiiil  to  "read  the  contract."  At  this 
point,  Kat/enberg  said,  "Arthur  got 
very  angry  . . .  and  said,  'I  don't 
have  to  read  the  contract,  Frank. 
It's  not  the  deal  that  we  made.' 
Frank  said,  'Listen,  it's  not  going    ' 
to  be  an  issue.  Jeffrey's  going  to 
stay  these  next  two  years.'" 

Now  Katzenberg  went  to  Wells  in 
high  dudgeon.  "I  [said  that  I]  didn't 
understand  why  a  game  was  being 
played  with  me,  that  if  the  point  of  this 
was  to  somehow  or  another  leverage  me 
into  staying  with  the  company,  that  this 
would  certainly  cause  me  to  do  exactly 
the  opposite. ...  If  I  had  now  worked  for 
this  company  for  10  years  under  a  lie  ...  I 
couldn't  possibly  stay  there  another  day. 
I  was  furious." 

Wells  told  him  to  look  at  the  contract. 
"I  know  what  the  deal  is,  Frank,"  Katzen- 
berg replied.  Finally,  Katzenberg  testified, 
Wells  said  he  had  had  a  "misunderstand- 
ing" with  Eisner  about  Katzenberg 's  deal 
and  that  Eisner  believed  that  if  Katzen- 
berg left  in  1994  he  would  get  nothing. 
Katzenberg  said  that  Disney  would  hear 
from  his  lawyer.  But  Wells  asked  him  to 
hold  off,  assuring  him,  "I  will  handle  this 
with  Michael  Eisner."  Or  so  Katzenberg 
says.  The  matter  was  left  unresolved  for 
months  while  Eisner  and  Wells  offered 
new  responsibilities  that  might  keep  Katz- 
enberg at  the  studio  through  1996.  Eisner 
claims  that  Katzenberg  even  made  a  play 
for  Wells's  job,  which  Katzenberg  denies. 
But  he  has  long  insisted  that  in  1993  Eis- 
ner had  promised  him  the  job  if  Wells 
weren't  in  the  picture.  With  Wells  a  fit  61 
at  the  time,  that  wasn't  a  scenario  that 
anyone  expected  to  confront  in  the  imme- 
diate future. 

But  in  April  1994,  Wells  was  killed  in  a 
horrific  helicopter  crash.  Katzenberg  says 
he  awaited  the  big  call  from  Eisner.  It  nev- 
er came.  Instead,  Eisner  announced  that 
he  would  assume  Wells's  position.  Disas- 
ter followed  tragedy.  Three  months  after 
Wells's  death,  Eisner  was  stricken  with 
pains  in  his  arms  during  Herbert  Allen's 
annual  Sun  Valley  retreat  of  media  moguls. 


"[You're]  going  down 

a  direction  that  I  think  is  not 

in  your  client's  best  interest/' 

Eisner  warned  Katzenberg's 

attorney.  "Or  mine." 


GOING  UP 

Former  Paramount  chairman  Barry  Diller 

with  his  proteges  Eisner  and  Katzenberg  in  a 

Los  Angeles  elevator,  1993. 


As  he  lay  in  his  hospital  bed  following 
emergency  quadruple-bypass  surgery,  Eis- 
ner became  convinced  that  Katzenberg 
was  campaigning  in  the  media  for  the 
number-two  job.  By  August,  it  was  over. 
To  the  shock  of  the  town,  the  two  agreed 
that  Katzenberg  would  leave  by  the  end  of 
September. 

In  two  subsequent  meetings,  Katzenberg 
pleaded  with  Eisner  to  pay  him  promptly. 
But  for  the  following  year  Disney  respond- 
ed with  letters  saying  that  it  had  not  decid- 
ed whether  Katzenberg  should  be  paid. 
"One;  and  for  all,"  Sandy  Litvack,  now 
Disney's  chief  of  corporate  operations, 
wrote  in  November  1994,  "no  one— not  me 
and  not  Michael— has  'repudiated  Jeffrey's 
right  to  his  contractual  incentive  bonus.' 
We  have  made  no  decision!" 

But  in  court  Litvack  testified  that  the 
letters  did  not  say  what  they  appeared  to 
say.  Disney  was  not  declining  to  take  a 
position,  he  said— the  company  had  taken 
the  position  that  Katzenberg  wasn't  owed 
any  money.  But  with  "a  dead  witness  on 
my  hands,"  as  he  untenderly  described 
Wells,  the  company  was  facing  legal  un- 
certainties and  was  considering  paying 
Katzenberg  anyway.  Meanwhile,  Michael 
Ovitz  was  hired,  briefly,  as  Disney's  presi- 


dent, and  he  made  fruitless  efforts  to 
negotiate  a  settlement.  Finally,  in  April 
1996,  Katzenberg  went  to  court. 

Ikii  the  "midget"  issue  was  raised, 
Eisner  made  what  sounded  like  a 
pointed  threat:  if  pushed  any  further, 
he  would  damage  Katzenberg  even  more 
seriously  than  Katzenberg's  lawyers  had  just 
damaged  him.  "If  you  pursue  this  line  of 
questioning,  it  will  put  in  the  public  record 
those  things  that  [should  not]  be  in  the  pub- 
lic record,"  Eisner  told  Fields  ominously. 
"[You're]  going  down  a  direction  that  I 
think  is  not  in  your  client's  best  interest  or 
mine,  but  particularly  your  client's."  Fields 
ater  told  the  court  that  it  was  the 
^  first  time  in  his  45  years  of 
'  practicing  law  that  he  had  been 
threatened  from  the  witness 
stand.  Eisner's  attorneys  argued 
r  that  Eisner's  rhetoric  was  "a  plea, 
not  a  threat."  Exactly  what  Eisner 
might  have  disclosed  remains  one 
of  the  central  mysteries  of  the  case. 
But  Katzenberg  and  Eisner  have 
been  playing  a  high-stakes  game,  and 
damage  has  been  done  to  both  sides. 
Aside  from  suffering  an  expensive  loss 
in  the  first  round,  Eisner  has  faced  an 
avalanche  of  devastating  press.  One  prom- 
inent Disney  shareholder  expresses  con- 
cern that  the  case  "tears  at  the  fabric"  of 
Disney's  invaluable  reputation  and  dis- 
tracts Eisner  at  a  time  when  the  company 
could  use  his  attention.  Eisner  must  also 
suffer  the  consequences  of  ignoring  pleas 
to  settle  from  a  wide  array  of  powerful  as- 
sociates, including  former  Capital  Cities/ 
ABC  chairman  Tom  Murphy  and  Disney 
board  member  Stanley  Gold— a  man  who 
essentially  functions  as  Roy  Disney's  fi- 
nancial brain.  Sources  close  to  Disney  say 
that  settlement  efforts  have  been  ham- 
pered by  Katzenberg's  unreasonableness. 
Katzenberg  has  taken  his  chances,  too. 
He  has  been  portrayed  in  the  most  negative 
possible  light  by  Disney,  which  argued  that 
he  was  boastful,  disrespectful,  and  awfully 
weak  when  it  came  to  live  action.  And  the 
day  after  Eisner's  "midget"  testimony,  one 
cheeky  DreamWorks  assistant  answered  the 
phone,  "DreamWorks  SMG."  The  real 
name  is  DreamWorks  SKG  the  final  three 
letters  referring  to  the  surnames  of  Spiel- 
berg, Katzenberg,  and  Geffen.  On  the  day 
following  Eisner's  testimony,  however,  it 
was  DreamWorks  SMG.  Get  it? 

But  Katzenberg  has  his  consolations. 
During  the  trial,  the  litigants  had  comput- 
er monitors  before  them,  on  which  they 
could  read  an  instantaneous  transcription 
of  the  testimony.  Someone  had  taped  a 
message— a  scrap  from  a  Chinese  cookie— 
on  Katzenberg's.  It  read,  "You  will  be 
coming  into  a  fortune."  □ 


JULY     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


Imagine  all  the  uses  for  this 

American  Greetings  card. 


Sfec/a/  sorr/eoqe 
mho  yers  uour 
J?/ood  putyptnj . 

14  hour  kave. 


(quii  Ubu've  oeerj 
running  Qf-Hr 


yen/  />er$orjal 
hairier. 


Introducing  Intuitions.  A  distinct  and  exciting 
new  line  of  cards  from  American  Greetings. 


a 


AMERICAN  GREETINGS 

...says  it  best 


For  a  retailer  near  you,  call  1-800-777-4891.  Or  visit  us  online  at  www.americangreetings.com  or  AOL  Keyword:  American  Greetings      Z  AGC,  Inc. 


Intuitions  from  American  Greetings. 


An  off-beat  sense  of  humor. 


V 


beauttful  iriend 
■•Tau^b-nhday. 


wishing 


A  unique  point  of  view. 


A  distinct  alternative  to 
traditional  greeting  cards. 


Inside: 


:qu/tbe«""g  younger  than 


me. 


'nside 


For  birthdays,  anniversaries,  or 
no  particular  reason  at  all. 


They're  cards  you  can  send  any  day 


But  are  far  from  the  everyday. 


'EXSEr* 


iJ 


,nside:haPPVW^bu<J^ 


to  my 


AMERICAN  GREETINGS 

...says  it  best 

For  a  retailer  near  you,  call  1-800-777-4891.  Or  visit  us  online  at  www.americangreetings.com  or  AOL  Keyword:  American  Greetings    ©AGC,  lnc 


Ml 


Name  and  occupation:  Piper  Perabo.  actress.  Age:  22.  Provenance:  Tom?  River.  New  Jers     Planning  to  catapult  to 
fame  from  out  of  nowhere  in:  Whitehays,  starring  Danny  Hoch.  playing  the  girlfriend  of  a  gangsta-rapping  Iowa 
teenager,  and  The  Adventures  o) 'Rocky  and  Bullw  inkle,  starring  Robert  De  Niro.  RcncRusso.  and  Jason  Alexander. 
In  The  Adventures  of  Rocky  and  Bullwinkle  you  play  a  patriotic  F.B.I,  agent  battling  De  Niro's  sinister  Fearless  Leader.  Were  you  at 
all  intimidated  by  his  legendary  intensity?  "At  first.  I  was  so  stunned  I  couldn't  say  anything.  But  he  was  very  kind  to  me. 
He  even  sat  down  with  me  a  couple  of  times  and  talked  about  the  process."  Why,  if  she's  not  careful,  Piper  may  soon 
be  contacted  by  Vincent  Gallo:  "What  I'd  like  to  do  next  is  a  real  gritty  independent  film.  I've  played  the  cJiccry. 
all-American  type,  and  I  like  that,  but  I'd  also  be  happy  to  get  away  from  her  for  a  while."  How  a  soothsaying  techie 
gave  Piper  a  glimpse  of  her  future:  "One  day  while  I  was  filming  Rocky  and  Bullwinkle.  Marvin,  the  boom  op. 
said.  'You  know,  your  whole  life  is  going  to  change  when  this  movie  comes  out.'  It  was  so  frightening. 
But,  who  knows,  maybe  no  one  will  like  me.  so  I'll  have  nothing  to  worry  about." 


U  L Y     19  9  9 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     tORENZO      AGIUS 


VANITY     FAIR  71 


In  the  Twilight  zone:  Pavement  (from  left, 

Scott  Kannberg,  Mark  Ibold,  Bob  Nastanovich, 

Steve  West,  and  Stephen  Malkmus)  releases 

its  sixth  album.  Terror  Twilight. 


Grooved  Pavement 


ince  the  release  of  its  debut  album,  Slanted  and  Enchanted,  in 
1992,  Pavement  has  been  held  up  as  an  avatar  of  all  man- 
ner of  socio-musicological  movements— slackerism,  lo-fi, 
anti-grunge,  neagarage.  But,  to  tell  the  truth,  Pavement  occu- 
pies a  homely  universe  quite  apart  from  any  youth  culture.  After 
seven  years  and  five  albums,  Stephen  Malkmus,  the  band's  lead  singer- 
guitarist,  says  simply,  "We've  got  a  good  Protestant  work  ethic.  We've  had  our 
influences,  but  now  they're  more  hidden. . . .  We  just  sound  like  Pavement." 
The  role  of  blase  underground  antihero  rather  suits  Malkmus,  who  founded 
the  band  in  1989  with  guitarist  Scott  Kannberg,  a  childhood  friend  from  their 
hometown  of  Stockton,  California.  A  lanky,  bookish  sort,  Malkmus  looks  and 
acts  more  like  a  grad  student  than  a  rock  star.  While  his  alternative-nation 
peers  croon  about  suburban  disaffection  and  suicidal  longing,  Malkmus 
waxes  obliquely  about  summer  flings  and  shady  lanes,  lifts  lyrics  from  John 
Ashbery  poems,  and  is  not  afraid  to  flex  his  sardonic  side.  "It's  good  that 
there  are  wordy  people  that  are  still  into  rock,"  says  percussionist-Moog 
technician  Bob  Nastanovich.  "We  are  kind  of  dependent  upon  them."  For  a 
band  so  unassuming,  Pavement  has  attracted  a  surprising  degree  of  rever- 
ence. Its  underproduced,  distorted-but-kind-of-pretty  sound  has  elicited  awe 
from  some  of  the  brighter  lights  of  the  alternative  scene,  who  have  willfully 
tried  to  pare  down  and  master  Pavement's  bare-bones  formula.  Ironically, 
this  is  a  sound  Pavement  is  moving  away  from.  For  its  sixth  album,  Terror  Twi- 
light, which  comes  out  this  month,  Pavement  enlisted  the  services  of  an  out- 
side producer  for  the  first  time  (Nigel  Godrich  of  Beck  and  Radiohead  fame), 
and  the  result  is  the  most  polished  and  accessible  Pavement  record  to  date. 
"It's  an  experiment  for  us  to  be  working  with  a  producer,"  says  Malkmus. 
"We  wanted  to  see  if  we  sound  good  big.  But  that  doesn't  mean  that  the  next 
album  is  going  to  sound  like  Whitney  Houston."  —JOHN  GILLIES 


J.  K.  Rowling 

author,  Harry  Potter 

and  the  Chamber 

of  Secrets 

Corelli's  Mandolin, 

by  Louis  de  Bernieres 

(Vintage). 

"It  is  beautifully  written, 

stunningly  evocative, 

and  made  me  both  cry 

and  laugh  aloud. " 


Ron  Insana 

anchor, 
CNBC's  Street  Signs 

All  Too  Human, 
by  George  Stephanopoulos 

(Little,  Brown). 

"It  allows  history-lovers 

a  compelling. 

contemporaneous  account  of 

one  of  history's  most 
enigmatic  figures.  It  offers 

afresh  perspective 

on  our  sometimes  confusing 

and  curious  times. " 


tight-Table  Reading 


Yefim  Shubenlsov 

author.  Cure  Your  Cravings 


Rudyard  Kipling's  Verse, 

by  Rudyard  Kipling  (Doubleday). 

"'If— a  blueprint  for  a 

successful  life— is  required  reading  for 

anyone  aspiring  to  be  whole. " 


Hanif  Kureishi 

screenwriter, 
My  Son  the  Fanatic 

I  Married  a  Communist, 

by  Philip  Roth 

(Houghton  Mifflin). 

"He  started  off 

as  a  great  writer,  and 

his  work  keeps  getting  better 

and  better. " 


VANITY     FAIR 


JULY      199] 


■!IJ=Mfll-13 


P     o 

Bombay®  Sapp. ... 


•J^Zd^mll 


Ji 


liU 


ini.  As  Arranged  by  Ulla  Darni. 


c/vol  (94  Proof)    100%  neutral  spirits.  ©1994  Carillon  Importers,  LTD.,  Teaneck,  N.J.  C1994  Ulla  Darni 


fairiilidlyYiwrs 


Seeking  help  with  Ben  Stiller  and  Janeane  Garofalo 


* 


torn  their  first  collaboration,  on  the  Emmy-winning  The 
Ben  Stiller  Show,  to  their  dysfunctional  superheroics  in 
the  upcoming  film  Mystery  Men,  Ben  Stiller  and  Janeane 
Garofalo  have  become  the  neurotic  wondertwins  of  their 
generation.  This  month,  with  their  psychobabble  satire, 
Feel  This  Book,  in  stores,  george  wayne  helps  them  get 
in  touch  with  their  inner  children. 

George  Wayne:  /  have  to  say,  Ms.  Garofalo,  after  reading  Feel 
This  Book,  /  thought  your  part  of  it  was  far  more  substantive 
and  had  more  weight  to  it  than  Ben's  did. 
Janeane  Garofalo:  You  are  really  asking  for  it. 
1  think  you're  just  attracted  to  Ben. 
Ben  Stiller:  Well,  Janeane  did  write  more       '"Mr 
words  than  I  did. 

G.W.  /  liked  best  the  part  where  you  say, 
"The  most  important  person  to  control  is  the 
person  you  have  sex  with." 
J.G.  That's  my  id  talking.  It  certainly  is 
important,  but  I  don't  mean  it. 
G.W.  Of  late,  Ben,  is  it  true  you  are  releas- 
ing your  chakras  with  Calista  Flockhart? 
B.S.  Oh,  my  Lord.  Let  me  tell  you 
something— Janeane's  been  with  Calista 
Flockhart.   If  you  want  the  dirt,  it's 
Janeane  and  Calista. 
G.W.  Oh,  c'mon. 
B.S.  I'll  admit  nothing  to  you. 
G.W.  Janeane,  what's  Ben's  strongest  sex- 
ual asset? 

J.G.  His  sense  of  humor,  and  the  fact  that 
he  actually  broke  the  headboard  on  his  bed 
B.S.  [Blushing]  When  did  that  happen? 
J.G.  You  were  playing  a  sex  game. 
B.S.  No,  no,  no. 
G.W.  Yes,  yes,  yes. 

B.S.  Do  not  print  that  out  of  context,  O.K.?  As  a 
joke  a  friend  gave  me  this  board  game.  You  spin 
the  dial,  and  it  has  different  sexual  positions  on  it.    / 
J.G.  I  think  the  headboard  broke  when  he  was 
playing  the  game. 

B.S.  That's  sheer  conjecture!  I've  never  even 
opened  the  box  of  the  game.  It's  still 
shrink-wrapped. 

G.W.  Janeane,  is  it  true  you  called 
models  "genetic  freaks"? 
J.G.  Yes,  I  did.  I  meant  that 
actually,  in  a  way,  their  pitu- 
itary glands  are  so  overactive 
genetically.  I  do  not  like  the 
culture  that  perpetuates  the 
worship  of  high  fashion. 
G.W.  But  I  can  tell,  Ben  is 
a  fashion  bessie. 


VANITY     FAIR 


\ 


B.S.  No  I'm  not. 
J.G.  Yes  he  is! 

G.W.  Janeane,  another  pet  peeve  of  yours  is  that  you  hate  the 
trappings  of  fame.  You  rage  constantly  against  the  fame  ma- 
chine, so  why  court  fame? 
B.S.  Good  question. 

J.G.  It's  not  really  courting  fame.  But  I  do  enjoy  the  lifestyle  it  af- 
fords you  by  being  a  working  actor.  And  I  do  enjoy  the  times 
when  people  recognize  you  and  you  can  cut  to  the  front  of  the 
line.  What  I  don't  participate  in  is:  "It's  Puff  Daddy's  birth- 
day . . .  blah,  blah,  blah."  And  I  always  ask  to  go 
in  a  back  way,  instead  of  down  the  red  carpet. 
G.W.  Ben,  did  you  know  that  your  ex-girlfriend 
played  field  hockey  in  high  school? 
B.S.  Who,  her?  We  were  never  boyfriend- 
girlfriend. 

G.W.  Janeane,  he  won't  admit  it! 
B.S.  We  were,  like,  intimate  for  a  very  short 
period  of  time. 

G.W.  You  know,  Ben,  you  were  actually  born 
one  day  after  G  W.  I'm  older  than  you,  but 
you  look  older  than  I  do. 
J.G.  I  really,  really  do  think  you're  attracted 
to  Ben.  You  have  that  cutting  thing. 
B.S.  What  year  were  you  born? 
G.W.  Tlie  same  year  as  John-John  Kenne- 
dy. Go  look  it  up  in  the  archives,  darling. 
You're  the  son  of  showbiz  legends  Stiller  & 
Meara.   You  never  had  to  suffer  any  hard 
knocks. 

B.S.  Everybody  has  their  own  set  of  obsta- 
cles that  they  have  to  confront  when  they're 
trying  to  make  it  in  this  business.  There  are 
plenty  of  stories  of  showbiz  kids  who  end  up 
"behind  the  music,"  or  whatever. 
G.W.  Janeane,  your  vital  statistics:  you  were 
once  named  funniest  person  in  Rhode  Island; 
your  favorite  Spice  Girl  is  Sporty  Spice— 
J.G.  I'm  in  love  with  Sporty  Spice. 
B.S.  I  know  Mel  C.  I  know  her  through  our 
mutual  friend  Guy  Oseary. 
G.W.  Please!  G.W.  is  quizzing  Janeane,  Ben! 
Have  you  ever  thought  about  being  a  San- 
dra Bernhard  single  mom? 
J.G.  I  used  to  think  about  being  a  sin- 
gle mother.  Until  I  started  getting  dogs, 
and  then  I  realized  I  was  not  ready  to 
be  a  single  mother.  So  I  just  take  care 
of  my  dogs,  Dew  and  Kid. 
G.W.  Well,  because  there  are  two  of 
vou  there  is  no  more  room,  so  G.  W 
thanks  J.G.  and  B.S. 
B.S.  B.S.?  I  never  heard  that 
one  before! 


JULY     199 


/ille  STS  tested  with  optional  Z-rated  tires.  Mercedes-Benz  E430  tested  with  standard  H-rated  tires. 
0.3334CAD ©1999  GM  Corp.  All  rights  reserved.  Cadillac*  Seville,.,  NorthstarB StabiliTraKu, 


you're  thinking  about  a  Mercedes-Benz  E430,  slow  down  and  read 

this.  Because  in  recent  USAC-certified  tests,  Seville  STS  with  the 

Northstar  System  and  the  amazing  handling  of  StabiliTrak  decisively 

outperformed  the  E430  in  wet  and  dry  cornering  — results  that  trans- 
late to  the  real  world  every  time  you  turn  a  corner*  So  test  drive  a 

Seville  STS.  Because  it  will  change  the  way  you  think  about  American 

luxury  performance  sedans.  And  more  than  ever,  it's  what's  next. 


SEVILLE  STS.  IT'S  WHAT'S  NEXT., 


cadillac.com 


Christopher  Hitchem 


John  F.  Kenn 
and  Carolyn  B 


<^ 


Georgette  Mosbacher 


Ron  Howard  and 
M.C.  Hammer 


Sherry  Lansing  and  Sumner  Redstone 


n  Bradlee,  Bob  Squier, 
'  and  Sally  Quinn 


D.C.    CONFIDENTIAL 


ast  year  Sid  Blumenthal  swore  he  could  get  me  into  the  Vanity      ?:£ 

Fair  party,"  said  President  Clinton  at  the  85th  annual  White       J**^Hs»  w^ 

_^  House  Correspondents'  Dinner,  held  at  the  Washington  Hilton.      "*K  r1-. 

"What  a  difference  a  year  makes.  This  year  I  have  to  take  him."  . :■'».-.> '.,;■'   > 

Here's  who  did  show  up  at  V.F.'s  sixth  annual  after-party  at  the 

Russian  Trade  Federation:  Ben  Bradlee  and  Sally  Quinn,  Henry 

Kissinger,  British  ambassador  Sir  Christopher  Meyer,  Peter  Jen-        .,r:;:: 

nings,  Steve  Rattner,  Sumner  Redstone,  Senator  Russ  Feingold,  Howard  Stringer  and  Scott  Berg 

Senator  Robert  Torricelli  and  Patricia  Duff,  Barbara  Walters, 

Christopher  Buckley,  Portia  de  Rossi  (whose  blindingly  beautiful 

hair  was  fashioned  in  a  much-admired  cornrow/dreadlock  ex-  ^^ 

travaganza),  M.C.  Hammer,  and  300  others  who  helped  inject 

Washington  with  a  little  glamour— Veuve  Clicquot-style.  And 


Bennett  and 
Jim  Kelly     5 


$v 


Portia  de  Rossi 


— -^    H 

i    ~~ 

Michael  Bloomberg  and 
Sill  Richardson 

BS 

Ki 

N 

M 

wBm     A 

7Q 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     JONA 


fH  AN     BECKER] 


Ron  Silver  and  Jack  Volenti 


k  Kate  Driver 


what  would  the  Establishment  be  without  a  splinter  group?  Sean 
Penn,  tieless  and  chain-smoking,  held  court  in  the  garden  with 
Claire  Danes,  Tom  Ford,  State  Department  spokesman  Jamie 
Rubin,  and  Carolyn  Bessette  Kennedy  and  John  F.  Kennedy  Jr., 
who  stayed  until  the  champagne  ran  dry  at  2:30  a.m. 


-EVGENIA  PERETZ 


Gerry  and  Imaging  Spence 


-  *""do«nimck  Dunne 


Sean  Penn  and 
Carolyn  Bessette  Kennedy 


Barbara  Walters  and  Dominiclc  Dunne 


Elizabeth  Saltzman 
and  Tom  Ford 


.'      'AW'  ' ' 


Richard  JohnsonOWrf  Eleanor  Mondale 


l'**) 


NATO's  bombing  campaign  against  an 

intransigent  Serbia  has  stretched 

into  its  third  month — and  touched  off  a 

dangerous  confrontation  between 

the  U.S.  and  China.  But  on  Kosovo's 

borders,  all  politics  are  ancient, 

fueled  not  by  "smart  bombs"  and 

Great  Power  rivalries  but  by 

centuries-old  scars  and  the  maniacal 

pursuit  of  a  legendary  kingdom. 

JANINE  DI  GIOVANNI  faces  the 

terror  of  Serb  gunfire  inside  Kosovo 

and  explores  the  fresh  wounds 

being  carved  in  Balkan  hearts,  with 

ethnic-Albanian  mothers  and 

children  forced  from  their  villages 

amid  the  savagely  methodical 

slaughter  of  their  men 


i 


LOST  WORLD 

The  Kosonm 

village  of  Mijalic.  some 

20  miles  northeast  of 

Pristina.  under  Serb 

attack.  March  15.  I«)99. 

According  to  witnesses. 

muzzle  Hashes  from  near) 

artillen  were  visible 

through  the  smoke: 

automatic-weapon  tire 

could  also  he 

heard  coming  from 

the  tillage. 


I  if; 


4  ,  ** 


-  ■  -.,,. 


KXODU 

An  overcrowded  train  in  the 
Kosovan  capital  of  Pristina  collects 
ethnic-Albanian  refugees  en  route  to 
Macedonia,  April  1,  1999.  More  than 
800.000  people  have  lied  Kosovo 
since  lighting  began  in  1998. 


Rozaj,  Montenegro, 

on  the  kosovan  border, 

April  5,  1999 


v* 


A 


ehije  has  the 
deadest  eyes.  She  sits  on  a  pile  of  old  blan- 
kets in  the  corner  of  a  converted  factory 
and  silently  watches  me  cross  the  room. 
Except  for  her  eyes  her  face  is  still.  When 
I  kneel  next  to  her,  she  stares  wordlessly, 
oblivious  to  the  whimpering  two-year-old 
at  her  feet— her  daughter,  Duka. 

It  is  cold  in  the  factory,  but  Mehije 
wears  only  a  sweater,  muddy  bedroom 
slippers,  and  thin  cotton  socks,  pink  ones. 
She  has  a  long  messy  plait  running  down 
her  back.  She  does  not  return  my  tentative 
smile;  instead,  she  reaches  behind  her 
back  and  hands  me  a  package  of  loose 
rags  tied  with  a  blue  ribbon.  She  motions 
for  me  to  open  it,  and  when  I  do,  I  see 
that  the  bundle  of  rags  is  alive,  a  tiny  baby 
with  gaping  bird  mouth.  It  makes  no 
sound.  It  is  Mehije's  seventh  child,  a  boy, 
born  four  days  before  in  the  woods  while 
she  was  fleeing  the  Serbs. 

Mehije  registers  my  shock.  Then  she 
begins  to  talk  about  her  flight  from  Koso- 
vo. She  is  an  ethnic  Albanian  from  the  vil- 
lage of  Mojstir,  and  she  has  to  think  to 
calculate  her  age:  38.  Married  to  Abdul- 
lah, a  farmer.  When  she  left  Mojstir,  it 
was  burning.  It  is  now  a  place  that  will 
cease  to  have  any  history,  like  the  more 
than  800,000  people  who  have  trudged 
over  the  mountain  passes  out  of  Kosovo, 
leaving  behind  a  gutted  country. 

Before  March  1998,  when  the  war  es- 
calated in  Kosovo,  Mehije  had  a  simple 
life  that  she  did  not  question:  pigs,  cows, 
the  children  in  school,  Abdullah  earning 
a  meager  living.  But  in  the  past  few  years, 
as  Serb  forces  grew  more  prevalent  in  the 
area  and  Serb  civilians  more  antagonis- 
tic, it  became  harder  for  Albanians  to 
find  employment,  and  there  was  an  in- 
crease in  tension.  Throughout  this  last 
pregnancy,  she  had  a  nagging,  ominous 
feeling. 

"We  felt  something  different,  something 
strange  in  the  air"  is  how  her  sister-in-law, 
Senia,  who  is  sitting  on  a  blanket  next  to 
Mehije,  describes  it. 

Mehije  does  not  understand  military 


VANITY     FAIR 


n  uvcra  political  insur 
,  i  know  that  4,000  peo- 
•■  ovci  the  Kosovan 
probably  never  return  to 
does  not  remember  Yu- 
.  wk  in  and  Serb  leader  Slobo- 
dan Mi  <  -oh's  rabid  speech  to  the  Serb 
ininoritj  in  Kosovo  on  April  24,  19X7.  It 
was  a  speech  thai  played  to  the  Serbs' 
man)  resentments,  recent  as  well  as  an- 
cient. It  was  .i  speech  that  set  in  motion  a 
hideous  cycle  of  nationalism  and  ethnic 
hatred,  first  in  Slovenia  and  Croatia,  then 
Bosnia,  and  now  spiraling  wildly  out  of 
control  in  Kosovo. 

She  doesn't  care  about  any  of  that.  The 
only  things  Mehije  ever  knew  were  how 
to  be  a  wife  and  a  mother,  how  to  bake 
bread,  milk  COWS. 

This  is  what  happened:  Sunday,  March 
2S,  was  the  fifth  day  of  the  nato  bomb- 
ing, a  campaign  that  does  not  make 
sense  to  her  and  her  neighbors  ("Our 
lives  were  easier  before  nato  got  in- 
volved"). It  was  also  Bajram,  an  impor- 
tant Muslim  holiday,  traditionally  a  day 
when  children  are  scrubbed  and  dressed 
in  their  best  clothes  and  families  gather  to 
eat  special  food,  like  roast  lamb.  Mehije 
was  in  her  kitchen  when  the  door  burst 
open  and  her  Serb  neighbors— people  she 
had  known  all  of  her  life— pointed  guns 
in  her  face  and  ordered  her  family  out 
of  their  house.  Her  neighbors  were  not 
masked.  She  saw  their  faces,  saw  the  anger 
and  the  determination. 

"Take  nothing.  Just  go  quickly,"  they 
said,  waving  their  guns.  Mehije  and  Ab- 
dullah rounded  up  the  children,  put  some 
bread  in  their  pockets,  and  ran.  "I  had 
the  birth  pains  when  I  was  running,"  she 
tells  me.  But  despite  the  warning  of  an 
imminent  labor,  "I  ran  anyway." 

The  family  did  not  have  a  car,  but  found 
neighbors  who  were  fleeing  on  a  farm  trac- 
tor. They  stopped  in  a  sheltered  forest  near 
Mojstir  and  tried  to  build  temporary  huts 
from  branches.  Other  villagers— Mehije 
thinks  around  200— were  there,  too,  forag- 
ing in  the  snow  for  wood  to  make  a  fire, 
for  small  animals  to  eat,  for  water.  Families 
were  separated;  there  was  the  sound  of 
wailing  children.  People  kept  asking:  Have 
you  seen  my  father?  Have  you  seen  my  sis- 
ter? Most  of  them  were  lacking  papers:  the 
Serbs  had  liberated  them  of  their  docu- 
ments, making  sure  they  would  never  re- 
turn to  Mojstir,  in  the  same  generous  way 
that  Serbs  are  charging  refugees  to  cross 
the  border  out  of  Kosovo. 

In  the  forest,  Mehije's  group  heard  re- 
ports of  what  was  happening  in  their  vil- 


lage Then  houses  were  on  fire.  Everything 

they  owned  had  been  either  destroyed  or 
loaded  onto  trucks  and  driven  away. 


M 


ehije  stayed  in  the  lorest  for  three 
days.  I  ler  labor  began.  The  tem- 
perature dropped  to  freezing. 
Then  the  same  Serbs  who  had 
ordered  them  out  of  their  village  came 
back  and  ordered  them  to  march  up  the 
mountain  and  over  the  border  to  Albania, 
a  walk  which  would  take  three  days.  "Go 
back  to  your  country!"  they  jeered.  "Your 
village  is  burned!  You  have  nothing  left." 

"I  had  never  been  to  Albania  before," 
Mehije  says.  "My  family  has  always  lived 
in  Kosovo."  But  she  did  not  argue.  She 
gathered  her  six  children  and  began  to 
walk.  She  started  to  time  her  contractions, 
which  were  coming  closer  together. 

The  baby,  whom  she  called  Leotrim, 
came  while  they  were  wading  through 
waist-deep  snow.  Mehije  walked  until  she 
could  not  walk  anymore  and  then  she 
dropped  to  her  knees.  The  men  cleared  a 
space  for  her  in  the  snow,  and  she  lay  on 
twigs.  Senia,  who  has  an  eighth-grade  edu- 
cation and  no  nursing  experience,  acted  as 
midwife.  There  was  no  water,  no  blankets, 
no  food,  no  privacy.  Mehije  says  the  baby 
came  quickly,  within  three  hours.  Senia 
cut  the  cord  with  a  knife.  Afterward,  when 
her  sister-in-law  handed  her  the  baby, 
Mehije  remembers  thinking  that  this  last 
child  came  into  a  world  of  confusion,  of 
terror,  born  under  a  strange,  foreign  sky. 
He  will  never  know  his  home. 

"He  won't  remember  this,"  Mehije  says 
now,  holding  Leotrim.  She  is  still  in  shock: 
she  has  the  look  of  a  raw,  bleeding  animal 
that  someone  has  kicked  and  beaten.  She 
repeats  herself,  as  if  by  saying  it  she  can 
make  it  reality:  "He  won't  remember  any 
of  this." 

She  says  the  baby  has  nothing,  not  even 
diapers.  She  says  she  has  not  seen  Abdul- 
lah since  the  family  arrived  in  Rozaj,  a 
town  on  the  Montenegrin-Kosovan  border 
about  50  kilometers  from  her  home.  She 
is  worried  for  his  safety. 

"We  heard  they  were  taking  away  men 
and  boys,"  another  one  of  the  women  sit- 
ting near  her  on  a  mattress  says  in  a  fright- 
ened voice.  It  is  a  chilling  thought,  because 
everyone  in  the  room  remembers  what 
happened  in  Bosnia,  at  Srebrenica,  when 
the  supposed  U.N.  safe  haven  finally  fell  in 
July  1995:  the  men  were  rounded  up  and 
sent  to  the  forest  and  never  returned. 

I  stand  and  say  I  will  go  to  the  village 
to  try  to  find  Abdullah  (who,  it  will  turn 
out,  is  fine;  they  had  been  inadvertently 


separated  in  the  chaos  of  the  march)  ai 
to  gel  some  things  for  the  baby  at  t 
apothecary.  On  the  way  out  of  the  factoi 
I  pass  an  old  man  with  a  bloody  stun 
instead  of  an  arm.  He  wears  a  beret  ai 
is  silting  upright  in  a  wheelbarrow,  smo 
ing.  He  is  talking  to  himself,  muttering  t  | 
same  thing  over  and  over  in  Albanian,  r- 
one  is  listening  to  him. 

This  is  what  it  is  like:  no  matter  he 
many  times  you  listen  and  record  soil 
one's  story,  no  matter  how  many  refuge 
you  see  crossing  over  mountaintops  we; 
ing  plastic  bags  on  their  heads  to  prote 
themselves  from  the  freezing  rain— y< 
don't  ever  really  get  used  to  it.  And  y< 
when  there  are  so  many,  it  is  easy  to  c 
humanize  them.  They  have  the  san 
faces,  the  same  stories;  they  come  dov 
the  road  with  their  lives  in  two  carri 
bags.  And  by  the  time  they  get  herd! 
into  abandoned  schools  or  warehouse  i  ■'" 
you  forget  that  once  they  had  lives  ar 
read  books,  that  they  have  birthdays,  we 
ding  anniversaries,  love  affairs.  You  forg  I 
they  had  a  favorite  television  show,  a  d( 
or  a  cat  that  they  loved. 

This  is  what  ethnic  cleansing  means  fi 
them:  they  lose  their  history,  their  iden 
ties,  their  sense  of  belonging.  Nothing  fee 
safe  anymore.  Anything  can  happen. 

Travnik,  Central  Bosnia, 
October  12,  1992 

A  different  conflict,  the  same  wa 
The  intensive-care  unit  of  a  mak 
shift  hospital.  The  smell  of  bloc 
and  urine.  A  low,  primal  moa: 
ing,  like  that  of  an  animal.  I  follow  it 
find  a  12-year-old  boy  with  his  torso  rippc  | 
open  from  chin  to  pubic  line,  writhing 
agony  on  a  bed.  Shrapnel  wounds  in  his  i 
testines.  A  Muslim,  he  was  trying  to  escaf 
from  Turbe,  his  burning  village,  when  tl  '- 
Bosnian  Serb  army  lobbed  a  shell  into  tl 
fleeing  column  of  people. 

The  boy,  named  Salko,  got  separate  I 
from  his  father  in  the  confusion.  Someor  I 
got  him  to  the  hospital,  but  he's  been  alor  I 
for  nine  days,  and  the  exhausted  doctor  hi 
only  enough  painkillers  to  give  him  an  ii 
jection  once  a  day.  "You  cannot  imagir 
the  pain  he  is  feeling,"  the  doctor  says 

I  sit  by  his  bed.  Salko  has  a  long,  thi  [ 
face,  gray  eyes,  lank  blondish  hair  pla 
tered  to  his  face  with  sweat.  His  mouth 
gaping  with  pain.  It  seems  unlikely  h  | 
will  live. 

"What  do  you  expect?"  says  a  passin 
nurse,  not  unkindly.  "He  barely  has 
stomach  left." 


The  bundle  of  rags  is  alive,  a  tiny  baby,  a  boy,  boi  ii 


t.v. 


r 


MB 


Zagreb  to  Dubrovnik, 

March  25,  1999 

he  day  after  the  first  nato  bombs 
fall,  I  catch  a  flight  from  London 
to  Zagreb,  the  Croat  capital.  De- 
spite the  pilot's  announcement  that 
■  plane  has  been  diverted  to  Slovenia  be- 
ise  the  airspace  over  Croatia  is  closed, 
do  land  in  Zagreb— the  first  plane  in 
3  days.  Outside  the  airport,  there  are 
ous  taxi  drivers  waiting. 
"At  last!  Passengers!,"  Marko,  my  driver, 
rs,  rubbing  his  hands.  Having  lived  through 
ee  wars  in  eight  years,  he  knows  that  war 
vays  brings  profit  to  the  lucky  ones, 
y  destination  is  the 
rder  between  Kosovo 
d  Montenegro,  a  10-      sloyenia 
•so-hour  drive  through 
oatia,   Bosnia,  and 
ontenegro.  Marko  says 
could  also  drive  me 
wn  the  highway  toward 
igrade  and  leave  me 
the  Croat-Serb  bor- 
r  if  I  want.  "You  can 
ilk  over  the  border  to 
rbia,"  he  says.  "Me, 
1  never  go  there  again." 
The  Croats  are  fright- 
ed. Not  only  have  the 
r  strikes  ruined  their 
ances  for  a  decent  tour- 
season,  but  they  are 
■rifled  of  being  sucked 
to  that   black   hole 
sm  which  they  recent- 
emerged.  They  are  only  now,  six  years 
ter  their  cease-fire  with  the  Serbs  was  de- 
ared,  starting  to  recover  psychologically, 
le  Croats  were  not  blameless  in  their 
ar— in  1995  they  ethnically  cleansed  the 
rajina  region  of  an  estimated   170,000 
:rbs  who  had  lived  there  for  generations- 
it  they  have  also  suffered.  The  mental  im- 
;es  from  the  Croat  war  are  indelible:  air 
ids  in  Zagreb;  vicious  battles  in  eastern 
avonia;  400  men  taken  from  the  village 
)spital  in  Vukovar,  260  of  them  executed 
id  dumped  in  a  mass  grave. 
Marko  drives  me  as  far  as  the  Croat 
ty  of  Dubrovnik.  Residents  of  this  me- 
ieval  coastal  town,  which  eight  years  ago 
ithstood  a  nine-month  siege  and  daily 
ombardment  at  the  hands  of  its  Mon- 
negrin  neighbors  (who  are  now  being 
ombed  by  nato),  have  more  sanguinary 
elings  about  the  air  strikes  than  do  their 
suntrymen  in  Zagreb. 
"This  bombardment  comes  as  the  jus- 
ce  of  God,"  Miso,  a  former  Croat  com- 


mander who  defended  the  city,  tells  me. 
"It  comes  as  a  puncture  in  this  awful 
balloon  of  evil."  He  is  not  a  vindictive 
man,  and  says  that  the  Croats  "are  not  a 
bellicose  people."  But  he  cannot  forget 
what  happened  here.  Essentially,  this  is 
the  story  of  the  Balkans.  This  place  is 
haunted  by  the  dead.  There  is  too  much 
weight  of  history,  too  much  destruction, 
too  many  grudges  and  blood  feuds  to 
forget. 

I  rise  at  five  a.m.  the  next  day  and 
thumb  a  lift  to  Bosnia  with  a  Danish 
U.N.  worker  going  to  Sarajevo  via  Repub- 
lika  Srpska  (the  Serb-run  territory  in 
Bosnia).  Several  hours  into  the 


that  my  son  and  my  grandson,  the  next 
generation,  will  never  forget  what  the  Serbs 
have  done  to  the  Albanian  people." 


T 


•  Zagreb 


HUNGARY 


CROATIA 


BOSNIA 
AND 

HERZEGOVINA 

Sarajevo  * 


Belgrade 


ROMANIA 


•Tuzla 


SERBIA 
*  Srebrenica 


"X 


aVU 


Dubrovnik 


MONTENEGRO    *oia\ 
Podgorica 

S#    •    *  # 

Cetinje  ^ 

Kukes • 


• 
KOSOVO 

V 


Pristine 


ALBANIA 


•  Blace 
Skopje 
MACEDONIA 


BORDER  WAR 

Serbia  and  Montenegro  make  up  the 

Serb-dominated  Yugoslav  federation.  Kosovo 

is  a  Serb  province.  The  arrows  indicate 

the  flow  of  refugees  out  of  Kosovo. 


journey,  a  radio  report  comes  in:  20  men 
in  Goden,  a  remote  village  in  Kosovo, 
were  lined  up  in  front  of  the  school  and 
shot  through  the  head.  Clean,  methodical 
killing  like  the  other  recent  massacres  in 
Kosovo:  March  1998,  52  coffins  lined  up 
in  Prekaz;  and  in  Racak,  January  1999, 
40  more  ethnic  Albanians  murdered. 

We  do  not  know  it  yet,  but  today  an- 
other massacre  is  taking  place  in  the  vil- 
lage of  Mala  Krusa:  around  a  hundred 
men  executed  by  Serb  forces.  At  great 
risk,  a  survivor,  Milaim  Bellanica,  will 
record  the  aftermath  on  a  family  video 
camera.  He  will  smuggle  the  tape,  which 
depicts  gruesome  images,  to  the  BBC. 
He  will  later  say,  "I  have  done  this  so 


hough  the  nato  campaign  is  just 
beginning,  already  there  are  casu- 
alties. A  Stealth  plane  is  shot  down 
somewhere  near  the  road  on  which 
we  are  driving.  In  Belgrade  they  are  jubi- 
lant with  their  victory:  like  winning  the 
lottery.  At  the  demonstrations,  they  carry 
placards   which   say,   sorry,   we   didn't 

KNOW  IT  WAS  INVISIBLE. 

The  Dane  and  I  stop  to  eat.  A  Serb 
farmer  at  a  roadside  stand  is  roasting 
a  whole  lamb  gored 
through  its  midsec- 
tion with  an  iron  stick. 
He  gives  us  plates  of 
greasy  hunks  of  meat. 
We  eat  with  our  hands, 
silently.  An  unsmiling 
youth  brings  bread,  of- 
fers loza,  a  local  brandy, 
preferred  drink  of  the 
Serb  forces.  It  is  around 
11   a.m.  and  the  farmers 
gathered  around  another 
wooden  table  are  deep  into 
their  loza.  I  remember  the 
Serb    gunners    dug    into 
trenches  high  above  Saraje- 
vo: they  were  always  drunk 
by  lunchtime.  The  safest 
time  to  get  into  the  city 
was  early  morning  because 
they  were  sleeping  off  their 
hangovers. 
I  turn  down  the  brandy. 
We  enter  Bosnia.  The  Dane  says  that 
Muslims  from  the  Bosnian-Serb  border  are 
flooding  into  Sarajevo  on  buses,  fleeing 
from  the  nato  bombing.  "They  are  terri- 
fied that  once  again  the  Serbs  will  turn  on 
them,"  he  says.  I  think  of  the  sick  irony  of 
the   situation:   people   finding   refuge   in 
Sarajevo.  During  the  siege,  I  remember 
families  risking  snipers  and  minefields  to 
cross  the  airfield  at  night  to  escape  from 
the  place.  The  first  thing  you  saw  when 
you  entered  the  city  was  graffiti   on   a 
burned-out  building:  welcome  to  hell. 

Farther  down  the  road,  we  pass  signs 
with  arrows  pointing  toward  towns  in 
eastern  Bosnia.  We  pass  through  Olovo, 
once  a  front  line,  blackened,  leveled,  and 
we  pass  the  roads  leading  in  the  direction 
of  Gorazde  and  Srebrenica.  We  begin  to 
talk  about  the  recent  massacre.  The 
Dane  says  quietly,  "It  is  not  a  good  thing 
if  they  are  taking  the  men  away." 

In  Srebrenica,  they  separated  the  men 


the  woods  while  his  mother  was  fleeing  the  Serbs. 


IP 


A 


It  is  easy  to  dehumanize  them, 

to  forget  they  once  had  lives— a  favorite 

TV  show,  a  dog  or  cat  they  loved. 


3MELESS 
'sovars  arrive  by  bus  at 
sato  transit  camp  in 
acedonia,  April  6,  1999. 
any  refugees  had  their 
mes  burned,  their 
ssessions  either  stolen  or 
strayed,  their  personal 
pers  confiscated.  In 
>sovo,  there  may  be  nothing 
which  thev  can  return. 


Despite  the  feci  thai  then  iln  commandei 

lilippe  Morillon  swore  "I  v-mII  never  leave  you"  and  the 

I    i  i  U.N.  sate  haven,  it  fell  in  July  1995.  Five  thou- 

pie  are  still  not  accounted  lor.  Seven  thousand  Muslims 

i lightered  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  7,000  skulls,  7,000  sets 

ol  bone:  Counting  in  dead  bodies  is  horrific  enough. 

Ni  \k  SrEBRENH  v 
APRI1    17.  1993 

Chain-smoking,  I  am  hunched  over  a  ham  radio,  the  only  con- 
tact  a  group  of  fellow  journalists  and  1  have  with  Srebrenica. 
The  Serb  infantry  has  broken  the  Bosnian  front  lines  southeast 
and  northeast  of  the  town.  Fourteen  international  aid  workers 
and  30,000  terrified  civilians  are  trapped  inside. 

The  voice,  desperate  and  broken  by  static,  comes  over  the  ra- 
dio describing  the  town:  "like  a  scene  from  hell."  There  are  dead 
in  the  streets.  Hand-to-hand  fighting.  A  U.N.  command  post  was 
hit  by  a  mortar. 

"The  Serbs  are  getting  closer,"  says  the  voice.  Every  day  for 
two  weeks  we  have  spoken  to  the  voice.  I  feel  as  if  I  know  him 
intimately.  Once,  he  asked  if  we  had  cigarettes,  and  what  kind. 
Now  he  is  being  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  Serbs.  Shortly,  he 
will  be  killed,  and  we  will  sit  by  and  listen,  unable  to  do  any- 
thing. His  voice  has  taken  on  a  new  note:  high-pitched  panic. 

"We  beg  you  to  do  something,  whatever  you  can.  In  the  name 
of  God.  do  something!"  The  room  is  silent.  We  are  paralyzed  by 
our  helplessness.  "Does  the  world  know  about  us?"  continues  the 
voice.  "Does  Clinton?  Does  John  Major?" 

The  lucky  ones,  the  refugees  from  Srebrenica,  the  ones  who 
got  out,  are  wandering  the  streets  of  Tuzla  like  the  walking  dead. 
Amputees,  rape  victims,  people  slowly  going  mad.  And  13-year- 
old  Sead,  blinded  by  shrapnel  while  playing  football.  He  knows  he 
should  have  stayed  in  the  basement  during  the  worst  bombard- 
ment, but  it  was  a  beautiful  day  and  he  wanted  to  go  outside. 

"I  wanted  to  play,"  he  says  to  me.  Then  he  turns  awkwardly 
in  the  bed.  He  has  not  yet  gotten  used  to  this  new  gift  from  the 
Bosnian  Serb  army,  his  blindness.  "I  would  give  anything  to 
know  what  happened  to  my  eyes." 

Rozaj, 

March  30,  1999 
(Day  Seven  of  the  nato  Bombing) 

The  Kosovan  city  of  Pec,  a  place  of  deep  historic  and  mythic 
symbolism  for  the  Serbs,  is  burning.  It  has  been  bombed  by 
nato,  and  simultaneously  torched  by  the  Serbs,  who  are  making 
the  ethnic  Albanians  pay  for  the  bombing  campaign  by  running 
them  out  of  their  surrounding  villages.  All  around  the  city,  the 
refugees  are  fleeing,  mainly  on  foot.  The  weather  has  turned  bit- 
terly cold— below  freezing  in  the  mountains— and  the  refugees  are 
not  dressed  for  it.  They  are  wearing  bedroom  slippers  and  hand- 
knit  cardigans.  Few  have  hats  or  gloves  or  proper  winter  gear.  When 
they  fled,  they  took  only  what  they  could  hold  in  their  two  hands. 
I  used  to  ask  people  what  they  took  with  them  when  they  left. 
Wedding  photographs?  Baby  pictures?  Birth  certificates?  Most  of 
them  would  look  at  me  blankly:  "We  take  nothing,"  they  said. 
Meaning,  they  took  nothing  personal,  just  the  closest  thing  at  hand. 
I  am  standing  on  a  border  mountain  pass  while  people  trudge  by 
on  their  way  out  of  Kosovo  into  Montenegro.  A  woman,  Anna,  waits 
for  her  brother  at  the  crossing.  "Where  continued  on  pagi   i 36 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


Krall 
of  the  Wild 


t  not  for  the  crisp, 


swinging  soulfulness  of  her  piano,  the  throaty  allure  of  her 
voice,  her  unfailing  taste  in  the  songs  that  she  chooses  to 
interpret,  and,  lastly,  the  movie-star  elegance  of  her  per- 
son, one  might  be  inclined  to  look  upon  the  meteoric  rise 
of  Diana  Krall  with  a  touch  of  suspicion.  There  is  some- 
thing unearthly  about  her,  some  aura  that  suggests  she 
could  be  the  offspring  only  of  some  extraordinary  union, 
like  that  of  Nat  "King"  Cole  and  Carole  Lombard  or  even 
Botticelli's  Venus.  She  isn't,  of  course,  and  the  truth  is  re- 
freshingly simple.  Diana  Krall  is  an  outrageously  blonde 
33-year-old  Canadian  who  sings  and  plays  jazz  piano  in 
a  soothingly  urgent  manner  that  reflects  other  voices  and 
times  but  remains,  uniquely,  Diana  Krall.  In  the  past  six 
years  she  has  established  a  niche  for  herself  on  the  jazz 
scene  with  such  achievements  as  two  Grammy  nomina- 
tions, memorable  performances  (like  the  1996  salute  to 
Ella  Fitzgerald  at  Carnegie  Hall),  and  a  small  group  of 
CDs  that  have  earned  her  a  fervent  audience.  Her  latest 
contribution,  a  moody  ballad  called  "Why  Should  I 
Care,"  which  she  recorded  for  the  recent  Clint  Eastwood 
film,  True  Crime,  sounds  like  the  ultimate  in  neo-noir  and 
will  be  included  in  her  forthcoming  CD,  When  I  Look  in 
Your  Eyes,  to  be  released  this  month  by  Verve. 

While  one  hears  traces  of  other  female  singers  in  Diana 
Krall,  as  one  might  expect  from  a  young  woman  who  has 
been  developing  her  chops  since  she  was  four  (in  Nanai- 
mo,  British  Columbia),  her  special  vocal  influences  have 
been  two  men.  First  there  is  Nat  "King"  Cole,  whose  atti- 
tude and  phrasing  are  so  much  a  part  of  the  Krall  mood. 
And  her  feelings  for  songs  suggest  a  full  awareness  of 
Bobby  Short.  Yet,  despite  the  baggage  of  its  origins,  she  is 
capable  of  making  a  song  very  much  hers.  As  brilliant 
young  jazz  guitarist  Russell  Malone  put  it,  "The  thing  I  like 
about  her  singing  is  she  just  sings  the  song."  Like  our  love 
Diana  Krall  is  here  to  stay.  -RICHARD  merkin 


PHOTOGRAPH 


BRUCE     WEBER 


' 


**| 


MELODY-MAKER 


Diana  Krall,  photographed 

at  Golden  Beach  in  Miami,  Florida, 

February  17,  1999. 


I 


This  Fourth  of  July  is  shaping  up 

to  be  another  unofficial  "Will  Smith  Weekend" 

(see:  Independence  Day,  Men  in  Black)  as  the  most  popular 

man  in  movies — everyone  loves  him,  even  the 

grumpiest  gaffer — opens  in  Wild  Wild  West,  a  $100-million-plus 

action  comedy.  On  the  set  and  at  the  techno-gadget-packed  home 

in  the  L.A.  exurbs  that  Smith  shares  with  his  wife, 

actress  Jada  Pinkett-Smith,  NED  ZEMAN  gets  the  30-ye; 

actor  and  rap  artist's  exuberant  riffs  on  being 

black  in  Hollywood,  making  nearly  $20  million  a  picture, 

and  choosing  "sexy,  cool,  or  funny" 


i. 


k 


EASY  RIDER 


VN  ill  Smith  riding  Spiffy 

near  Tucson,  Arizona. 

April  9,  1999.  In  Wild  WM  Hist. 

based  on  the  60s  television 

series,  he  plays  the  role  ereated 

bv  Robert  Conrad. 


he  only  thing 
you  can  really,  truly  hate  about  Will  Smith 
is  that  he  is  not  your  best  friend  and  nev- 
er will  be.  He  already  has  a  best  friend 
(his  wife,  actress  Jada  Pinkett-Smith),  as 
well  as  several  auxiliary  best  friends,  in- 
cluding his  former  rap  partner,  DJ  Jazzy 
Jeff,  and  the  comic  actor  Keenen  Ivory 
Wayans.  And  the  waiting  list  is  full,  since 
everyone  wants  to  be  best  friends  with 
Will  Smith— to  play  golf  with  him,  to 
watch  the  Sixers  with  him,  to  keep  him 
hidden  in  your  rec  room  to  cheer  you  up 
on  rainy  days.  This  will  never  happen. 
Which  is  why  spending  time  with  Smith 
tends  to  prompt  a  burst  of  euphoria  ("Will 
called  me  "my  man'l")  followed  by  a 
crushing  sense  of  loss  (Will  calls  everyone 
"my  man"). 

Director  Barry  Sonnenfeld,  a  powerful 
person  with  many  friends  and  a  lovely 
family,  nevertheless  turns  to  Will  in  his 
darkest  hours.  "I  used  to  say  that  Tom 
Hanks  is  the  most  normal  actor  I've  ever 
worked  with,  but  Will  is  just  so  special 
and  happy,"  says  Sonnenfeld,  the  cinema- 
tographer  on  Hanks's  breakout  film,  Big, 
and  the  director  of  two  Smith  films,  Men 
in  Black  and  Wild  Wild  West,  a  big-budget 
action  comedy  due  out  this  month.  "I  was 
home  last  year  in  New  York,  and  I  was 
worried.  I  went  out  to  L.A.  I  hung  out 
with  him  for  10  minutes,  and  then  I  came 
home  happy  and  my  wife  said,  'What 
happened  to  you?  Who  did  you  see?'  I 
said,  'Will.'  And  she  said,  'Oh,  O.K., 
fine.'  He  really  is  like  a  drug." 

If  you're  looking  to  read  an  explosive 
deconstruction  of  Will  Smith,  go  find  an- 
other article.  And  good  luck,  since  no 
one  has  ever  had  a  bad  word  to  say  about 
him— well,  aside  from  some  malcontent 
from  Smith's  early-90s  sitcom,  The  Fresh 
Prince  of  Bel-Air,  who  accused  him  of 
waging  a  ruthless  smear  campaign  against 
her.  Yeah,  right.  In  Hollywood,  it's  now 
axiomatic  that  wherever  Smith  goes  is  the 
place  to  be,  as  evidenced  by  the  scene 


outside   Ins  absurdly  large  trailer  at  the 

Warner  Bros,  studio,  where  part  of  Wild 

Wild  West  was  filmed.  When  Sunt h  ap- 
proaches the  usual  collection  of  gaffers 
and  grips,  it's  like  dc  Gaulle  returning  to 
Paris.  Rarely  do  you  see  teamsters  reach 
out  for  hugs,  but  they  can't  help  them- 
selves when  confronted  with  all  that 
bright-eyed,  jug-eared  Will  Smithness.  Lat- 
er, when  Sonnenfeld  happens  by,  Smith  is 
quick  to  make  introductions.  He's  big  on 
introductions.  "You  fellas  will  have  plenty 
to  talk  about,"  he  says  jokingly,  leaning  in 
close.  "You're  both  Jewish." 

mith's  trailer  is  outfitted  with, 
aside  from  the  usual  movie- 
star  amenities,  a  state-of-the- 
art,  eight-component  stereo 
system.  Smith  sits  directly 
across  from  it,  his  body  per- 
fectly aligned  with  a  large- 
screen  television  on  top  of  the  stereo,  as  he 
digs  into  a  heaping  plate  of  chilequiles  and 
sausages  prepared  by  one  of  his  assistants, 
an  agreeable  fellow  named  Jeff,  who,  like 
Smith,  tends  toward  monochromatic  athlet- 
icwear.  Smith  himself  is  a  vision  in  white: 
white  pullover,  white  Adidas  sweatpants, 
white  Nikes.  "This,"  he  says,  popping  a 
tape  into  the  VCR,  "is  what  I  call  bangin. " 
By  which  he  means  very,  very  loud. 

For  the  next  seven  minutes,  Will  Smith's 
trailer  is  the  loudest  place  in  the  universe. 
He  is  screening,  for  the  first  time,  his  mu- 
sic video  for  Wild  Wild  West,  a  lavish,  the- 
atrical production  reminiscent  of  Michael 
Jackson's  landmark  "Thriller"  video.  For 
Wild  Wild  West,  Smith  has  sampled  Stevie 
Wonder's  1974  hit  "You  Wish"  and  given 
it  a  kind  of  rap-Western  twist  (if  you  can 
imagine  that),  thanks  to  the  help  of  Won- 
der and  rappers  Kool  Moe  Dee  and  Dru 
Hill,  all  of  whom  appear  in  the  video. 
You  will  be  hearing  this  song  often  in  the 
coming  weeks— very  often— but  you  will 
never  like  it  half  as  much  as  Smith  does. 
At  first,  Smith  quietly  eats  and  listens, 
eats  and  listens;  after  two  minutes,  he's 
eating  faster  and  bouncing  in  his  seat;  by 
the  midway  point,  he's  wolfing  the  food 
and  approaching,  in  the  words  of  one 
crew  member,  "full  jiggyness"— "jiggy" 
being  the  term,  signifying  a  certain  with- 
it  quality,  that  Smith  single-handedly 
made  famous  in  his  1998  rap  hit,  "Gettin' 
Jiggy  wit  It." 

The  video  still  has  a  few  kinks  to  iron 
out,  but  mostly  Smith  is  worried  that  it's 
not  loud  enough.  He  never  thinks  it's  loud 
enough.  This  despite  the  fact  that  his  trail- 
er is  convulsing:  a  bottle  of  Jergens  liquid 
soap  bounces  across  the  counter  and  falls 
into  the  sink.  Volume  is  his  life.  "The 


thing  I  always  tell  Barry  is  'Pump  up  t 
bass!  Pump  up  the  bass!'  When  shit 
plodes,  make  it  explode  for  real.  Pop  t 
speakers!"  He's  moving  around  the  trail 
"It  needs  to  be  loud  enough  to  make 
not  be  able  to  talk  and  not  be  able 
sleep,  you  know?"  In  order  to  commu 
cate  right  now,  Smith  must  either  p< 
tomime  or  yell.  "I'm  trying  to  get  it  ji 
so  it's  bangin'  and  loud!"  he  screams, 
understand  that  women  don't  need  [mov 
trailers  to  be  loud  to  enjoy  them!" 
shrugs.  "My  wife's  been  saying  it  forevei 

He  adds,  "I  turned  it  down  for  you!" 

You  mean,  he  is  asked,  you  actua 
play  it  louder? 

"Yeah.  That  was  about  75  percent.' 

Can  they  hear  it  outside? 

He  laughs  his  deep  Will  Smith  be 
laugh.  "They  can  definitely  hear  it  outsid 

Outside,  crew  members  are  staring 
Smith's  trailer  as  if  it's  about  to  give  bir 
He  smiles,  his  eyes  still  a  bit  puffy  fix 
sleep.  It  is  9:30  a.m. 

The  video  is  quintessent 
Will  Smith— an  exubera 
carefully  mixed,  exquisit 
mainstream  cocktail  of  t 
budget  filmmaking  and  n 
sic  for  the  masses;  odd  a; 
sounds,  there  is  a  genius 
the  sheer  mainstreamness  of  it  all, 
perhaps  it  would  be  a  kind  of  evil  gen 
were  it  not  coming  from  the  most  likal 
man  in  the  world.  (It's  official:  a  natioi 
survey  of  teenage  girls  voted  Smith  t 
most  admired  star  anywhere,  above  T( 
Cruise  and  Jim  Carrey.)  Smith  has  star 
in  just  five  feature  films,  but  two,  the  si 
mer  behemoths  Independence  Day  a 
Men  in  Black,  each  earned  more  th 
$250  million;  another  two,  the  thrill 
Bad  Boys  and  Enemy  of  the  State,  cc 
bined  grossed  more  than  $  175  million; 
fifth,  John  Guare's  splendid  Six  Degr 
of  Separation,  was  seen  by  few,  but  \ 
the  only  film  in  which  Smith  playec 
dark  character  bearing  no  resemblance 
Will  Smith,  the  multimedia  impresa 
who,  in  his  spare  time,  has  made  millk 
from  The  Fresh  Prince  of  Bel-Air  and  1 
sold  about  15  million  rap  records  so  che 
fully  unthreatening  that  he  once  rapp 
onstage  with  the  whitest  man  in  the  woi 
Al  Gore. 

It  doesn't  get  more  mainstream  tlj 
that,  and  yet  it  works  for  Smith  becai 
he's  so  unfathomably  at  peace  with  himsl 
so  damn  comfortable  in  his  own  skin,  t 
he  makes  the  mainstream  sound  like 
secret  room  inside  the  secret  room  at  ! 
dio  54.  "There's  different  ways  that  you 
measure  people's  greatness,"  he  says.  "A 


I 

1 


VANITY     FAIR 


WET  AND  WILD 


Of  his  friend 

murdered  rapper 

Tupac  Shakur. 

Smith  says, 

"It's  tougher  when 

you  know  the 

person  and  you  can 

kind  of  see  the 

road  for  them.*' 


y 


"Black  people  like  to  find 

comedy  in  what  is. 

White  people  like  to  find  comedy 

in  what  could  be.1' 


i  measure  greatness  is:  How 
you  affect?  In  your  time 
i  .  in.uiN  people  can  you 
[ov   man)  people  can  yon  make 
ie  better?  Or  how  many  people 
nspire  to  wanl  to  do  what  you 
ook  ai  Michael  Jordan   the  number 
ol  people  that  Michael  Jordan  inspires  to 
just  want  to  achieve       People  say.  '1  want 
to  be  the  Michael  Jordan  of  the  stock  mar- 
ket.' Michael  Jordan  is  the  standard  of  ex- 
cellence, and  I  aspire  to  that  level." 

When  Smith  says  things  like  this  and  he 
says  them  often  you  brace  for  a  Pat  Riley 
moment,  a  Tony  Robbins  infomercial,  and 
indeed  there's  a  fine  line  between  a  true  be- 
liever like  Smith  and  Matt  Foley,  the  sweaty 
motivational  speaker  that  Chris  Farley  played 
on  Saturday  Night  Live.  But  that's  what 
makes  Will  Smith  Will  Smith,  and  he  knows 
it.  He  knows  not  only  that  you  want  to  be- 
lieve him  but  that  you  need  to  believe  him. 

Smith  lives  in  an  8,000-square- 
foot  southwestern-style  house 
about  45  minutes  outside  of 
Los  Angeles,  in  the  quiet,  hilly 
exurbs  near  Calabasas.  (He 
is  building  a  new  house  on 
property  near  Malibu.)  The 
house  is  luxurious,  but  not  Hollywood  lux- 
urious, and  the  neighborhood  is  wealthy, 
but  contains  orthodontists  rather  than 
celebrities.  There  is  a  koi  pond.  There  is  a 
par-3  golf  hole  out  back— like  all  rappers. 
Will  Smith  plays  golf.  The  driveway  is  filled 
with  four  gleaming  S.U.V.'s,  at  least  one  of 
which  contains  a  custom  stereo  system,  a 
satellite  navigation  system,  two  phone  lines, 
a  DVD  system,  and  a  Sony  PlayStation 
mounted  on  the  back  of  the  front  seats— a 
perk  for  Smith's  two  young  children,  Trey 
and  Jaden,  who,  naturally,  are  charming 
and  well  adjusted.  Trey  says,  "I  don't  know 
why  people  laugh  at  what  you  say,  Dad— 
you're  not  really  that  funny." 

Lately  Will  and  Jada  have  been  puz- 
zling over  how  to  raise  kids  in  the  kind  of 
privileged  environment  that  they  them- 
selves were  never  raised  in.  Sticklers  for 
grammar— Wayans  calls  Smith  "Captain 
Correction"— they  have  worked  hard  to 
make  their  kids  speak  what  Smith  calls 
"proper"  English.  "I  always  hated  that 
growing  up,"  says  Smith,  who  as  a  student 
was  routinely  hassled  for  carrying  books 
home.  "I  hated  that  being  intelligent  and 
speaking  well  was  correlated  with  being 
white."  Then  again,  you  can  have  too 
much  of  a  good  thing.  Just  the  other  day, 
Trey  called  him  "Father."  Smith,  who  be- 
lieves that  today's  young  black  man 
should  be  "bidialectal,"  was  floored. 
"No,  buddy,"  he   continued  on  paoi   134 

2     I     VANITY     FAIR 


I  absolutely 
jelieve  I  could  be  the    j 
president  of  the  United  State 
I  believe  that  if  that  s  what 
ranted  to  do  with  my  life. 


•      «w 


cou 


* 


^ 


URBANE  COWBOY 


About  his  marriage. 

Smith  says,  "We  sacrifice 

ourselves  completely  for 

the  other  person. 

Complete  submission." 


■<. W1  •' =«.':'■ 'i'a 


channel- except  the  right 

one    tin.  direct  one." 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     MARIO     TESTINO 


■  months,  the  fashion 
rid  has  breathlessly 
owed  Gucci's  struggles  to 
ape  a  takeover  by 
rnard  Arnault,  the  brilliant. 
;datory  chairman  of 
'.M.H.,  whose  empire  includes 
itton,  Dior,  and  Veuve 
cquot.  From  "the  Dom-Tom 
nb" — a  human-poison-pill 
use  named  after  Gucci  C.E.O. 
menico  De  Sole  and  his  crown 
rel,  designer  Tom  Ford — to 
loophole  that  Arnault 
;rlooked,  to  the  emergence 
Francois  Pinault,  one  of 
ance's  wealthiest  men,  as  a 
ite  knight,  BRYAN  BURROUGJ 
reals  every  twist  and  turn  in 
epic,  $8.7  billion  battle 
:ween  the  world's 
3-eminent  makers  of 
:ury  goods 


f 


omenico  De  Sole  couldn't  stop  smil- 


ing. Reclining  in  the  back  of  his  black  Lincoln  sedan,  speeding 
toward  New  York's  John  E  Kennedy  International  Airport  on  the 
afternoon  of  Tuesday,  January  5,  the  bearded  chief  executive  offi- 
cer oi'  Gucci  Group  N.V.  was  certain  that  now— finally— the 
cloud  of  takeover  speculation  that  had  engulfed  his  company  for 
two  years  had  lifted.  The  previous  day  De  Sole  (pronounced  duh 
so-lay),  an  exuberant  55-year-old,  Harvard-trained  attorney,  had 
stood  and  delivered  an  upbeat  earnings  forecast  to  a  crowd  of 
Wall  Street  financial  analysts,  and  his  comments  had  kicked 
Gucci  stock  all  the  way  up  to  $56  a  share,  a  far  cry  from  the  $32 
range  where  it  had  languished  in  the  fall. 

At  these  heady  levels,  De  Sole  felt,  no  bargain-hunting  predator 
would  dare  swoop  in  on  Gucci.  Actually,  De  Sole  wasn't  worried 
about  just  anyone.  His  nightmare  had  a  face,  that  of  Frenchman  Ber- 
nard Arnault,  the  shrewd  50-year-old  chairman  of  the  acquisition- 
hungry  Paris  conglomerate  L.V.M.H.  Moet  Hennessy  Louis 
Vuitton  S.A.,  whose  taste  for  European  luxury  brands  made  him 
lord  of  such  names  as  Louis  Vuitton,  Christian  Dior,  Givenchy, 
Loewe,  Celine,  and  Veuve  Clicquot.  Rumors  had  flown  for  a  sol- 
id year  that  Arnault  was  preparing  an  attack  on  Gucci.  One  of 
De  Sole's  most  closely  guarded  secrets— even  Gucci's  white-hot 
designer,  Tom  Ford,  didn't  know  this— was  his  suspicion  that  Ar- 
nault had  silently  accumulated  a  position  of  nearly  three  million 
shares  of  Gucci  stock  the  previous  year.  But  feeling  secure  for  the 
first  time  in  months,  De  Sole  dialed  Bill  Reid,  Gucci's  investment 
banker  at  Morgan  Stanley  Dean  Witter.  "Well,  Bill,"  he  an- 
nounced, "it  looks  like  we're  in  the  clear  now!" 

All  that  night,  as  his  flight  crossed  the  Atlantic  to  London, 
De  Sole  poured  out  his  plans  for  the  coming  year  to  his  wife, 
Eleanore.  Now  that  the  Arnault  threat  had  subsided,  there  were 
new  lines  to  be  launched;  Ford's  latest  men's  collection,  to  be 
unveiled  in  Milan  later  that  month,  sounded  brilliant.  Arriving 
back  at  his  Knightsbridge  town  house  Wednesday  morning,  De 
Sole  took  his  wife's  advice  and  lay  down  for  a  nap.  Before  he 
could  fall  asleep,  though,  the  phone  rang.  It  was  his  London  as- 
sistant, Constance  Klein.  "You'd  better  get  to  the  office  right 
away,"  she  told  him.  There  was  an  urgent  call  from  Louis  Vuit- 
ton's  president,  a  trusted  Arnault  aide  named  Yves  Carcelle.  De 
Sole's  heart  raced.  Carcelle  was  an  old  friend,  but  the  Gucci 
chief  knew  immediately  that  it  couldn't  be  a  social  call. 

And  it  wasn't.  When  De  Sole  telephoned  Carcelle  from  his 
bedroom,  Carcelle's  tone  was  cordial  and  reassuring,  but  his 
message  was  anything  but.  L.V.M.H.,  he  said,  had  acquired 
more  than  5  percent  of  Gucci's  common  stock;  an  announce- 
ment would  go  out  later  that  day.  He  wanted  De  Sole  to  un- 
derstand that  the  investment  was  purely  "passive,"  that 
Arnault's  intent  was  nothing  but  "friendly."  Maybe,  Carcelle 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


suggested,  the  two  companies  could  find  ways  to  work  togeth 

De  Sole  hung  up,  stunned.  It  was  the  moment  he  had  be 
awaiting  for  years.  Hustling  in  to  Gucci's  whitewashed  town-hoi 
offices  on  Grafton  Street,  a  narrow  lane  lined  with  art  galleri 
I  )e  Sole  first  called  James  McArthur,  his  banker  at  Morgan  St; 
ley's  London  office,  and  here  the  Gucci  chief  encountered  more 
what  would  soon  become  a  torrent  of  bad  news.  McArthur,  w 
had  worked  closely  with  Gucci  executives  on  their  anti-takeo* 
plans,  was  scheduled  to  leave  the  following  week  for  a  yearl 
sabbatical  and  wouldn't  be  able  to  serve  as  De  Sole's  aide-( 
camp  in  the  coming  struggle.  Instead,  McArthur  telephoned  1 
boss,  Michael  Zaoui  (pronounced  zow-ey),  a  42-year-old  Frem 
man  who  headed  Morgan's  European  merger-advisory  groi 
who  at  that  moment  was  sipping  coffee  with  his  wife  at  a  Lond 
cafe.  Zaoui  didn't  know  De  Sole,  but,  having  represented  t 
Guinness  brewery  in  its  own  fight  against  L.V.M.H.  in  1997, 
knew  Arnault  well.  He  was  at  the  Gucci  town  house  in  minute 

What  the  senior  Morgan  banker  found  left  him  deeply  w 
ried.  De  Sole,  pacing  his  third-floor  office  nervously,  was  rea 
to  give  up  even  before  a  fight  could  begin.  "If  Arnault  wants  1 
company,  he  can  have  it!"  the  Gucci  C.E.O.  announced,  a 
mark  he  would  repeat  often  in  the  next  few  days.  "I  don't  giv 
shit.  I'll  just  go  sailing!"  To  Zaoui,  the  most  valuable  asset 
any  takeover  defense  was  a  C.E.O.  with  real  fortitude.  "I  neec 
fighter,"  he  found  himself  mumbling.  "Not  a  sailor." 

Far  worse  was  the  state  of  the  company's  takeover  defens 
there  were  almost  none.  "Where  is  the  fucking  defense?"  Zac 
asked  McArthur  afterward.  "What  have  you  guys  been  doing 
this  time?"  McArthur  admitted  that  Gucci  had  only  one  defer 
of  note,  secret  clauses  in  the  employment  contracts  of  its  t 
most  valuable  employees.  In  the  event  of  a  change  in  corpor 
control,  De  Sole's  contract  allowed  him  to  resign.  Tom  For 
contract  was  more  specific;  it  permitted  the  all-important  desij 
er  to  flee  Gucci  in  the  event  any  shareholder  gathered  35  pero 
of  the  company's  stock.  Morgan  bankers  privately  called  th< 
clauses  "the  Dom-Tom  bomb."  Others  would  take  to  calling  th 
Gucci's  "human  poison  pill."  Zaoui  was  underwhelmed.  "( 
God,"  he  breathed.  "What  have  I  gotten  myself  into?" 

Two  days  later,  on  Friday,  January  8,  after  public  disclosure 
L.V.M.H. 's  move  had  electrified  fashion  circles,  Zaoui  rose  bef 
a  jammed  conference  room  at  Gucci's  Grafton  Street  offices 
outline  their  options.  There  were,  he  suggested,  two  likely  seen 
ios.  Either  Arnault  would  launch  an  immediate  tender  offer  or, 
more  likely,  he  would  continue  buying  Gucci  shares  in  "a  ere 
ing  takeover"  designed  to  give  L.V.M.H.  effective  if  not  outri 
control  of  the  company.  Either  way,  in  the  absence  of 
takeover  defenses,  Gucci  would  almost  certainly  have  to  negoti 
with  Arnault  or  find  a  white-knight  investor  or  merger  partner 
fend  him  off.  "Basically  what  you're  saying,"  observed  Rob 
Singer,  Gucci's  chief  financial  officer,  "is  'You  guys  are  toast." 


To  the  surprise  of  many  of  those  involved,  I 
months  later  the  struggle  between  Gucci  a 
L.V.M.H.,  the  world's  two  pre-eminent  luxu 
goods  makers,  wears  on.  From  the  Janu 
shows  in  Milan  and  New  York  through 
March  shows  in  London  and  Paris  and  n  | 
to  the  cusp  of  summer,  its  myriad  twists 
turns  have  kept  the  runway  set  rapt;  Womi 
Wear  Daily  hasn't  devoted  so  many  column  inches  to  a  st 
since  hemlines  topped  the  knee.  The  blustery,  bickering  com 

"n 


'■'. 


july    i  m\,  |W 


"To  be  embarrassingly 

candid,  we  didnt  think  through 

our  initial  strategy  very  well. 

We  were  caught  completely  by 

surprise,"  says  De  Sole. 


for 


ESSED  FOR  SUCCESS 

menico  De  Sole  in 
rci's  London  office,  May  4,  1999. 
en  informed  of  the  takeover 
sibility,  at  first  he  said,  "If  Arnault 

its  the  company,  he  can  have  it 

just  go  sailing!" 


SAVING  GRACE 


Francois  Pinault, 
Paris,  September  1997. 
Ford,  who  admired 
Pinault's  collection  of 
contemporary  art, 
decided  to  support  him 
after  one  lunch. 
"What  can  I  say?"  asks 
Ford.  "I'm  a  Virgo." 


in  Ali-Frazier  fight  for  the  recherche  set:  In  one  corner  are 
underdogs,  De  Sole  and  Ford,  lionized  as  the  second  com- 
;  of  Pierre  Berge  and  Yves  Saint  Laurent  for  their  role  in 
nsforming  Gucci  from  the  industry's  jester  to  its  king.  Pacing 
•oss  the  ring  is  the  frustrated  pre-fight  favorite,  Arnault,  an 
ateur  classical  pianist  whose  tactics  owe  less  to  Mozart  than 
George  Patton. 

In  its  broadest  context,  their  fight  for  control  of  Gucci  is  just 
e  more  takeover— and  at  $8.7  billion  a  small  one  at  that— in  a 
ve  of  corporate  consolidation  sweeping  the  newly  united 
jntries  of  Europe.  It  is  a  wave  that  could  well  inundate  the 
ire  fashion  and  luxury-goods  industry,  which  is  thronged  with 
nily-run  companies  such  as  Versace,  Armani,  and  Prada,  as 
^vy  corporate  raiders  led  by  Arnault  move  inexorably  forward, 
;  sharks  among  cute,  chattering  dolphins. 

uch  to  Arnault's  dismay,  Gucci  has 
turned  out  to  be  one  tough  dolphin. 
That  De  Sole  and  his  tightly  knit  crisis 
team  of  lawyers  and  investment  bankers 
have  not  only  survived  but  gained  the 
upper  hand  may,  as  De  Sole  candidly 
acknowledges,  prove  the  old  maxim 
that  it's  better  to  be  lucky  than  good, 
hind  the  scenes,  amid  the  legal  and  financial  arcana  where 
rporate  battles  like  this  are  fought  and  won,  neither  Gucci 
r  L.V.M.H.  has  exactly  distinguished  itself  with  brilliant 
atagems.  Arnault  charged  at  Gucci  with  all  the  grace  of  a 
mo  wrestler,  betting  that  by  quickly  scooping  up  massive 
tounts  of  stock  he  would  scare  away  any  potential  rescuers. 
But  worse— far  worse— Arnault  now  admits  that  he  never 
ew  of  a  legal  loophole  through  which  De  Sole  has  driven 
i  one  but  both  of  the  two  major  transactions  that  have  so 
■  maintained  Gucci's  independence.  Only  after  a  series  of 
issteps  and  blunders  narrowed  his  options  did  De  Sole  suc- 
ed  in  using  this  loophole  to  arrange  exactly  the  kind  of 
lite-knight  rescue  that  Arnault  had  sought  to  prevent.  Now, 
:er  a  Dutch  court  on  May  27  approved  the  eleventh-hour  de- 
lsive  alliance  that  Gucci  has  forged  with  62-year-old  Fran- 
is  Pinault,  one  of  the  wealthiest  men  in  France,  Gucci  has 
clared  victory.  But  L.V.M.H.  vows  to  fight  on. 
How  it  all  happened  is  a  story  that  has  little  to  do  with 
afers  or  leather.  It  is  instead  about  arrogance  and  missed 
>portunities,  hubris  and  crossed  signals,  and  very  smart 
en  who  made  very  dumb  mistakes.  And  it  begins  and  ends 
ith  the  unassuming  De  Sole,  a  man  whose  ready  smile  and 
;ferential  manner  suggest  those  of  a  diplomat.  Underesti- 
ated  throughout  his  career,  De  Sole  has  undergone  a  quiet 
insformation  from  bewildered,  intimidated  cadet  to  assertive 
:ld  marshal. 

When  I  ask  Arnault  straight  out  where  his  designs  on  Guc- 
went  astray,  he  sighs.  "I  wish  I  understood  it  myself,"  he 
ys.  "I  should  maybe  have  tried  to  analyze  De  Sole  more, 
aybe."  He  pauses,  then  looks  up.  "No?"  Arnault's  elegant 
»ht-hand  man,  a  towering,  ruler-thin  attorney  named  Pierre 
ode,  has  his  own  take  on  De  Sole.  "I  think,"  he  says,  "we 
;re  a  little  naive." 

No  one  appreciates  the  irony  of  his  current  situation  more 

an  De  Sole,  a  native  Italian  who  runs  a  wildly  mongrelized 

ilian  company:  Gucci  is  headquartered  in  Florence,  chartered 

the  Netherlands,  and  traded  on  the  New  York  Stock  Ex- 


change; De  Sole  divides  his  time  among  London,  Connecticut, 
and  Tuscany:  Tom  Ford  is  based  in  Paris  and  London  and  so- 
cializes actively  in  Los  Angeles;  while  nearly  one-half  of  the  com- 
pany's sales  come  from  Asia.  Just  seven  years  ago  Gucci  was  so 
wrecked  that  its  previous  owner,  the  Bahrain-based  investment 
concern  Investcorp,  couldn't  give  it  away.  Gucci  lost  $30  million 
in  1992  and  a  year  later  teetered  on  the  edge  of  bankruptcy.  In 
1994,  amid  rumors  that  Gucci  would  be  liquidated,  Investcorp 
tried  to  sell  it  and  promptly  struck  a  deal  with,  of  all  people. 
Bernard  Arnault.  Set  to  acquire  the  company  for  about  $400 
million,  he  backed  out  at  the  last  minute.  In  a  story  that  has  be- 
come lore  inside  Gucci,  the  Frenchman  told  Investcorp  officials 
that  the  company  was  worth  "nothing."  Five  years  later  Arnault 
is  attempting  to  buy  that  "nothing"  for  $8.7  billion. 

By  now  the  story  of  Gucci's  fall  and  rise  is  well  known. 
Founded  in  1923,  Gucci  thrived  for  decades  on  the  quality  of 
the  subtle  leather  loafers  and  pocketbooks  its  Florentine  arti- 
sans assembled  by  hand.  Then,  after  the  death  of  family  leader 
Rodolfo  Gucci  in  1983,  the  many  branches  of  the  family  basi- 
cally went  to  war  against  each  other,  at  one  point  filing  15  sep- 
arate lawsuits.  By  1989,  after  a  series  of  infamous  incidents, 
including  the  alleged  boardroom  beating  of  one  relative  with  a 
portable  tape  recorder,  Rodolfo's  son,  Maurizio  Gucci,  emerged 
as  the  company's  chief  executive  and  largest  family  shareholder, 
having  sold  a  50  percent  stake  in  the  company  to  Investcorp. 
Maurizio's  consigliere  was  De  Sole,  who  after  attending  Har- 
vard had  become  a  partner  in  the  Washington  law  firm  of  Pat- 
ton,  Boggs  &  Blow,  where  he  handled  some  of  Maurizio's  tax 
issues.  In  time  Maurizio  lured  him  away  to  become  head  of 
Gucci's  American  arm. 

At  the  time,  Gucci's  wounds  were  self-inflicted.  Like  Perry 
Ellis  and  other  smart  fashion  brand  names.  Gucci  badly  wa- 
tered down  its  image  in  the  1980s  by  licensing  some  22,000 
products,  everything  from  Gucci  key  chains  to  Gucci  scotch. 
But  Maurizio's  decision  to  cut  back  on  these  agreements  was 
disastrous.  Cash  flow  dried  up,  and  the  company  went  into  a 
tailspin.  Watching  its  $160  million  investment  disintegrate,  In- 
vestcorp finally  took  action  in  1993,  buying  out  Maurizio,  as- 
suming 100  percent  control  of  the  company,  and  two  years  later 
naming  De  Sole  its  new  C.E.O.  (In  1995,  Maurizio  was  mur- 
dered on  a  Milan  street;  after  a  trial,  his  ex-wife  and  two  hit 
men  were  convicted.  Apparently  he  had  been  late  with  alimony 
payments.)  Unable  to  sell  Gucci,  Investcorp  assigned  De  Sole 
the  seemingly  impossible  task  of  resurrecting  the  company.  For 
creative  direction  De  Sole  turned  to  the  last  designer  on  his  pay- 
roll, a  talented  32-year-old  named  Tom  Ford. 

Born  in  Texas  and  raised  in  Santa  Fe.  the  sturdy, 
darkly  handsome  Ford  attended  New  York's 
Parsons  School  of  Design  and  hung  around 
the  Warhol  fringe  before  joining  Gucci  as  a 
junior  designer  in  Milan  in  1990.  With  the 
company's  survival  depending  solely  upon  his 
eye.  Ford's  first  collection  as  lead  designer,  in 
October  1994.  was  an  embarrassment.  But  the 
January  1995  men's  and  March  1995  women's  collections  were 
legendary,  "highlighted  by  patent-leather  coats  and  pants  with 
an  almost  metallic  finish  soon  seen  in  knockoffs  everywhere." 
as  this  magazine  later  noted.  Ford  made  his  influence  felt  in 
every  corner  of  the  Gucci  empire,  originating  or  approving 
every  design,  coming  up  with  ideas  for  the  ad  campaigns.  No 


VANITY     FAIR 


too  small  (To  tins  da>  he  insists  on  reviewing  the 

s  .it  companj  P.R  events.)  Suddenly  everyone  from 

luiii  Paltrow  was  wearing  Gucci,  There  were 

md  he  block  al  the  stores  in  New  York  and  Milan.  By 

1   1995   tnvestcorp  was  confidenl  enough  of  the  De 

that  ii  sold  shares  in  Gucci  to  the  public,  an 

ii 1 1 1 ii i  n.it  io  just  a  year  earlier.  Worldwide  sales  soon 

doubled,  then  doubled  again. 

Hui  Gucci's  success  on  the  runway  masked  its  vulnerability 
to  a  takeover.  Ii  was  no  accident  that  when  Arnault  finally  at- 
tai  ked.  Gucci  found  itself  ill-prepared.  From  its  inception  as  a 
publicly  held  company  in  1995,  in  fact,  it  was  designed  to  be 
taken  over,  [nvestcorp,  which  had  badly  wanted  to  cash  out  its 
majority  ownership  position,  "actually  structured  the  bylaws 
to  facilitate  a  100  percent  takeover,"  notes  Robert  Singer,  De 
Sole's  numbers  man.  "From  their  point  of  view,  that  would 
have  been  an  excellent  exit  strategy."  But  when  Investcorp  did 
sell  its  last  Gucci  shares  to  the  public  in  March  1996,  it  left 
De  Sole  and  Ford  at  the  helm  of  a  defenseless  ship— which 
grew  only  more  attractive  to  pirates 
as  the  pair  transformed  Gucci  into 
the  world's  hottest  fashion  corpora- 
tion. "We  were  just  sitting  here,  wait- 
ing for  someone  to  take  us  over," 
remembers  Ford.  "It  really  bothered 
me.  It  was  just  so  frustrating." 

n  1996,  De  Sole,  acutely  aware 
of  Gucci's  vulnerability,  be- 
gan something  code-named 
Project  Massimo— the  Ital- 
ian word  for  "maximum"— a 
catchall  tag  for  examining 
any  and  every  scheme  that 
might  ward  off  unwanted  suit- 
ors. Working  with  Morgan  Stanley  and 
a  pair  of  big  American  law  firms,  De 
Sole  looked  at  all  manner  of  defensive 
stock  restructurings,  even  partial  and 
total  mergers  with  companies  such  as 
Ronald  Perelman's  Revlon.  Eventually,  in  late  1997,  De  Sole  for- 
mally proposed  to  shareholders  that  Gucci  adopt  an  American- 
style  poison  pill,  a  device  that  when  triggered  floods  the  stock 
market  with  new  shares,  making  any  takeover  prohibitively  ex- 
pensive. Less  than  a  quarter  of  Gucci  shareholders  bothered  to 
vote,  however,  and  the  opposition  of  a  large  Los  Angeles  mutual- 
fund  company  squashed  the  proposal.  "It  was  incredibly  disap- 
pointing," recalls  Ford. 

In  retrospect,  the  defeat  may  only  have  highlighted  Gucci's 
vulnerability.  It  was  in  the  months  immediately  afterward,  Gucci 
executives  now  believe,  that  Arnault  began  secretly  buying  their 
stock.  (The  shares  in  question  were  traced  to  a  phantom  corpo- 
ration with  L.V.M.H.'s  Paris  address.  "Not  terribly  subtle,"  notes 
a  Gucci  attorney.)  But  when  an  outside  investor  did  emerge 
with  a  9.5  percent  stake  in  June  1998,  its  identity  stunned  De 
Sole:  it  was  Prada,  the  incredibly  successful,  family-controlled 
Italian  fashion  house  that  was  barely  half  Gucci's  size  and 
whose  president,  Patrizio  Bertelli,  had  little  experience  in  take- 
over raids.  Ford's  first  thought  was  that  Prada  was  some  kind  of 
stalking-horse  for  Arnault.  It  wasn't,  but  that  did  nothing  to 
lessen  the  shock  of  Bertelli's  sudden  appearance.  De  Sole  met 


Bertelli  lor  lunch  and  listened  as  he  described  ways  the  ij 
could  exploit  then  companies"  "synergies." 

It  was  a  classic  chummy  European  pitch,  one  that  ignc 
the  possible  conflict-of-interest  allegations  that  De  Sole,  n 
I  E.O.  of  a  publicly  traded  corporation,  might  face  if  he 
vored  Prada  in  any  kind  of  business  deal.  "I  tried  to  tell  h 
'We  can't  make  this  pizza  together,'"  De  Sole  recalls.  "[I  sa 
'Patrizio,  this  is  not  my  company.  I  have  to  talk  to  my  boai 
He  thought  I  was  joking."  Thereafter,  De  Sole  turned  a  c 
shoulder  to  Bertelli,  who  grew  increasingly  disgruntled 
Gucci  stock,  buffeted  by  last  year's  Asian  financial  crisis, 
into  the  $35-a-share  range.  De  Sole's  nearsighted  failure 
somehow  turn  Bertelli  into  an  ally  would  come  back  to  ha 
him.  "I  wish  I  had,"  De  Sole  says  today.  "In  life  you  mak 
lot  of  mistakes." 

The  Prada  situation  brought  new  urgency  to  De  Sole's  P 
ect  Massimo  schemes.  "I  was  really  scared  last  year,  last  si 
mer,  [thinking,]  Oh,  God,  these  guys  [at  L.V.M.H.]  are  re< 
coming,"  De  Sole  recalls.  "[But]  I  was  really  totally  stu 
about  it.  I  didn't  know  anything  [ab 
takeovers]."  By  autumn  he  and  F< 
were  busy  examining  a  drastic  solut 
to  keep  Gucci  out  of  hostile  har 
buying  the  company  themselves.  M 
gan  Stanley  bankers  arranged  for 
Sole  to  meet  with  Henry  Kravis, 
the  acknowledged  king  of  leveraj; 
buyouts,  and  Kravis  spent  sevel 
weeks  considering  a  possible  transl 
ebb      tion.  In  the  end,  however,  both  Kra| 

Iand  De  Sole  realized  a  buyout  ma 
no  sense.  Given  the  high  profit  marg| 
Kravis  required  to  pay  off  debt  ir 
buyout,  there  was  simply  no  way  fol 
"financial"  buyer  such  as  Kravis  f 
compete  with  a  "strategic"  buyer  si 
as  L.V.M.H.;  he  would  be  easily  oH 
bid.  "The  only  thing  we  would  ha^ 
done,"  De  Sole  says  today,  "is  star 
[bidding]  process  we  couldn't  contrc 

The  business  world  is  full  of  brash,  money 
outsiders  who  buy  their  way  into  establish 
industries  and,  by  virtue  of  their  outsize  p 
sonalities  or  nontraditional  actions,  stir 
strong  emotions.  Some,  such  as  Mohamed 
Fayed  and  the  late  Robert  Maxwell,  spend 
rest  of  their  lives  trying  to  buy  acceptan 
others,  such  as  Richard  Branson  and  Ted  T 
ner,  begin  as  buccaneering  outsiders  but  are  ultimately  embrac 
for  their  brilliance.  Despite  a  series  of  bitter  battles  in  which 
has  tilted  against  the  French  establishment,  Bernard  Arnault 
well  on  his  way  to  a  senior  position  in  the  latter  camp. 

Arnault's  story  has  been  told  almost  as  often  as  Gucc 
Raised  in  the  provinces,  the  son  of  a  wealthy  construction  mi 
nate,  he  was  a  35-year-old  novice  real-estate  developer  in  19 
when  he  used  his  first  wife's  connections  to  buy  a  stake  ir 
bankrupt  French  textiles  company  called  Boussac,  which  COU 
ed  among  its  assets  the  Christian  Dior  fashion  house.  The  Fren 
government  sold  him  the  rest  of  Boussac  after  he  promised 
safeguard  the  company's  payroll,  only  continued  on  pao 


VANITY     FAIR 


■ 


Suddenly  everyone  from  Madonna  to 
iwyneth  Paltrow  was  wearing  Gucci.  There  were 
lines  around  the  bf 


igain,  a  British 

uess  named 
nnowens  is  setting 
the  court  of  Siam. 
This  December, 
the  1870  memoir  made 
indelible  by  Rodgers 
and  Hammersteins  musical 

The  King  and  I  will 
be  brought  to  new  life  with 

Anna  and  the  King, 
starring  Choit  Yun-Fat  and 

Jodie  Foster  as  the 

headstrong  monarch  and  his 

stubborn  employee 


JLalace  intrigue: 

On  the  set  of  the  film 

Anna  and  the  King, 

Chow  Yun-Fat  portrays  King 

Mongkut  of  Siam,  whose 

mid-19th-cenrury  reign 

was  immortalized  in  the 

Broadway  hit  The  King  and  I. 

Opposite,  Jodie  Foster  stars 

as  Anna  Leonowens,  the 

English  tutor  for  the  king's 

more  than  50  children. 

Photographed  on  Pantai  Kok 

Beach,  Langkawi,  Malaysia, 

April  6, 1999. 


€i 


_  • 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     JULIA 


leil  Anna  Leonowens 
published  her  memoir  in  1870,  it  was  titled 
The  English  Governess  at  the  Siamese  Court. 
When  the  memoir  was  adapted  by  Mar- 
garet Landon  into  a  novel  in  1944,  it  was 
titled  Anna  and  the  King  oj'Siam  (a  movie 
of  the  same  name,  starring  Irene  Dunne 
and  Rex  Harrison,  came  two  years  later). 
By  1951,  Leonowens  was  the  tremulous  "I" 
in  Rodgcrs  and  Hammerstein's  voluptuous 
musical  The  King  and  I.  Now,  in  1999,  be- 
cause Siam  is  Thailand  and  heroines  are 
icons,  a  new  movie  of  this  beloved  story 
will  be  called  Anna  and  the  King. 

How  familiar  will  she  be?  With  Jodie 
Foster  in  the  title  role  we  can  expect  a 
Victorian  Englishwoman  with  real  Yan- 
kee spine  (not  to  mention  that  fine,  clas- 
sic jawline).  And  Chow 
Yun-Fat  (John  Woo's 
avenging  angel!)  has 
been  cast  as  the  impe- 
rious King  Mongkut— a 
brilliant  stroke.  As  for 
the  setting,  forget  those 
paper-lantern  studio  sets 
of  the  past.  Anna  has 
moved  to  the  outskirts  of 
Malaysia,  where  a  crew 
of  sculptors,  painters,  and 
artists  have  constructed 
from  scratch  one  of  the 
biggest  sets  ever:  a  seven- 
acre  re-creation  of  the 
king's  palace.  It's  realism 
down  to  the  last  detail, 
including  intricate  ward- 
robes for  19  elephants! 
Clearly,  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury Fox,  Foster,  and  director  Andy  Ten 
nant  (whose  most  recent  film  was  Ever 
After)  are  seeking  historical  accuracy  for 
Leonowens's  story. 

"It's  definitely  not  The  King  and  I"  says 
Tennant.  "Yul  Brynner  was  fabulous,  but  it 
was  a  musical  and  it  was  over  the  top.  In 
reality,  King  Mongkut  was  quite  a  vision- 
ary. When  you  discover  what  was  going 
on  in  19th-century  Siam  with  regard  to 
colonialism,  it  was  amazing  that  he  kept 
his  country  independent.  And  a  part  of 
that  was  his  relationship  with  Anna 
Leonowens."  And  was  it  a  romance?  "I 
think  you  can  fall  in  love  with  somebody 
and  never  touch  them."     — laura  jacobs 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


\  rdor  in  the  court: 
Clockwise  from  top  left, 
Tom  Felton  plays  Anna's  young 
son,  Louis;  the  Summer 
Palace  set  on  Pantai  Kok 
Beach;  Jodie  Foster  as  Anna 
takes  a  stroll;  a  Siamese  rice 
festival;  Bai  Ling  as  Tuptim 
(a  sacrificial  gift  to  the  king) 
whispers  to  the  head  wife, 
Lady  Thiang  (Deanna  Yusoff ); 
Melissa  Campbell  as  Princess 
Fa-Ying,  the  king's  favorite 
daughter;  Chow  Yun-Fat  as 
King  Mongkut  in  ceremonial 
costume;  monks  gather  for 
the  rice  festival.  Photographed 
on  location  in  Langkawi, 
Malaysia,  April  1999. 


y/     ;!| 


Cypa  1 1  t<|lil 

Bands  on  the  Run 


c 


^^^  he  music  industry's  summer-jobs  program  will 

wk      be  in  full  swing  this  year  with  hundreds  of  acts 
^^    finding  seasonal  employment  in  hundreds  of 
B    venues.  Among  the  most  noteworthy: 
4*  W         ODD  COUPLES:  Bob  Dylan  hooks  up  with 

\*^_^*r  Paul  Simon  for  a  unique  co-headlining  tour. 

Unafraid  of  competition,  too,  is  Alanis  Morissette,  who' 
share  a  bill  with  the  equally  intense  Tori  Amos.  THEY'RE 
BACK:  It's  been  more  than  1 0  years  since  Bruce  Springsteen 
took  the  E  Street  Band  on  the  road;  he'll  be  with  the  whole 
gang,  including  Clarence  demons,  Steve  Van  Zandt  (on 
hiatus  from  The  Sopranos),  Max  Weinberg,  and  Parti  Scia 
fa.  Ex-Pink  Floyd  singer  Roger  Waters  does  his  first  tour 
in  12  years,  Beach  Boy  Brian  Wilson  performs  rare  solo 
shows,  R.E.M.  goes  out  minus  original  drummer  Bill  Berry, 
and  Cher  takes  her  act  on  the  road.  SAFETY  IN  NUMBERS: 
There'll  be  three  days  of  peace  and  music  for  the  third 
time  at  Woodstock's  30th  anniversary,  to  take  place  in 
Rome,  New  York-1 80  miles  away  from  Max  Yasgur's 
farm.  A  diversified  lineup  includes 
Aerosmith,  Metallica,  Sugar  Ray, 
George  Clinton  &  the  P-Funk  All 

,  Collective  Soul,  Ice  Cube,  Willie 

jn,  Red  Hot  Chili  Peppers,  and 

lef  Jean.  This  could  be  the  last  ti 


for  the  all-gal  Lilith  Fair.  On  board  are  Sarah  McLachlan, 
Sheryl  Crow,  Luscious  Jackson,  MeShell  Ndegeocello,  In- 
digo Girls,  and  Chrissie  Hynde's  Pretenders.  The  Beastie 
Boys  host  a  Tibetan  Freedom  Concert  in  Chicago  with  Live, 
the  Roots,  Run-D.M.C,  and  a  solo  Eddie  Vedder.  For  those 
who  want  to  rock,  the  OZZfest  features  Black  Sabbath,  Rob 
Zombie,  Primus,  Slayer,  and  Deftones.  REUNITED:  Blon- 
die,  J.  Geils  Band,  and  Bad  Company.  SUPERSTARS:  A  truly 
daunting  number  of  headliners— Carlos  Santana,  the  All- 
man  Brothers  Band,  Tom  Petty  and  the  Heartbreakers,  Whit- 
ney Houston,  Elton  John,  B.B.  King,  John  Mellencamp, 
Barenaked  Ladies,  Jewel,  the  Offspring,  the  Goo  Goo 
Dolls,  Lauryn  Hill,  Brandy,  the  Verve  Pipe,  Chris  Isaak,  Mer- 
cury Rev,  Dave  Matthews  Band,  and  Phish— will  embark 
on  their  own  big  tours.  Tickets  avai 
able  at  a  box  office— or  scalper— 
nearyou.  —LISA  ROBIN 


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C—vf  "fr 


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With  America  about  to  celeb 
the  100th  birthday  of  its  larger-than 
literary  son  Ernest  Hemingv 
ALANE  SALIERNO  MASON  discovc 
in  an  old  steamer  trunk  a  each 
letters  and  telegrams  from  the  wr 
to  her  adoptive  grandmotl 
a  celebrated,  well-married  bea 
named  Jane  Kendall  Mason.  They  g 
new  insights  into  a  liaison  tl 
blossomed  amid  the  decadent  deligh 
of  1930s  Havana,  enraged  an 
enchanted  Hemingway,  haur  | 
his  work,  and  destroyed 
relationship  with 
editor  Arnold  Gingrich, 
founder  of  Esquire 
eventually  became 
fourth  husban 
the  dashing,  complica 
and  tragic  "Mrs. 


- 


DANGEROUS  GAME 


Jane  Mason  with  a 

lion  kill  in  Kenya,  1935.  Opposite, 

Ernest  Hemingway  fishing 

off  Key  West  in  1928,  three  years 

before  he  became  enamored  of  Jane, 

nine  years  before  he  turned  her 

into  the  vixen  Helene  Bradley  in 

To  Have  and  Have  Not,  inset. 


I 
1 1 

lundos 
i  he's 

..  .1  'iililn  throat" 
and  cannot  see  her 
thai  day,  and 
"Pooi  okt  Papa." 


One  character 
in  Ernest's  new  hoc 
seemed  to  have  si? 

recognizable 

characteristics  of 

yours." 


n  February  1937,  after  going  over  the  manuscript 
b  Have  and  Have  Not  with  the  author,  his  friend  Ernest  Hem- 
vay,  Esquire  founder  and  editor  Arnold  Gingrich  immediately 
te  to  his  lover,  Jane  Kendall  Mason:  "I  probably  made  a  mess 
lings  with  my  usual  exquisite  tact  but  one  character  in  Ernest's 
book  seemed  to  me  to  have  six  recognizable  characteristics  of 
•s  and  I  took  it  upon  myself  to  suggest  that  these  be  eliminated, 
e  the  character's  other  characteristics  combined  to  spell  bitch 
apital  letters  in  all  civilized  languages."  I  came  across  this  let- 
n  February  of  this  year,  along  with  some  two  dozen  affection- 
letters  and  telegrams  from  Hemingway  himself  and  dozens 
e  from  other  members  of  the  Hemingway  family,  all  ad- 
;sed  to  Jane  Kendall  Mason  and  buried  in  a  steamer  trunk  full 
noldering  Christmas  cards  and  bank  statements,  the  paper 
of  her  four  marriages.  Since  I  am  a  book  editor,  it  had  fallen 
ne  to  sift  through  the  legacy  of  words  left  behind  by  a  flam- 
ant  figure  I'd  known  only  slightly,  who  had  insisted  on  being 
ressed  as  "Grandmother  Jane"— my  adoptive  father's  adoptive 
:her.  There  were  a  dozen  or  so  trunks,  suitcases,  and  boxes  of 
papers  scattered  around  a  suburban  basement  and  garage, 
avoided  for  the  nearly  20  years  since  her  death.  Now  Ameri- 
vas  about  to  celebrate  the  100th  birthday  of  one  of  its  favorite 
s,  that  paradox  of  macho  posturing  and  finely  tuned  sensitivi- 
ve  know  as  Ernest  Hemingway.  I  picked  a  trunk  at  random, 
I  in,  and  a  day  and  a  half  later,  beneath  the  debris  of  husband 
3,  found  two  old  manila  envelopes  marked  "Hemingway." 
Ernest  and  Jane  met  on  the  ocean  liner  lie  de  France  in  the 
of  1931,  as  Jane  was  on  her  way  home  to  Havana  after  so- 
izing  with  the  likes  of  her  mother's  friend  the  Prince  of 
les— who,  she  noted  in  her  diary,  had  cursed  at  a  waiter  for 
lging  butter  to  the  table  instead  of  mustard.  Ernest, 
a  32,  was  returning  from  several  months 
Spain,  where  he  had  been 
tiering  materi- 


tflO 


PflSCfl 


3"" 


N^ 


\ 


^e^ 


■-\$jd>/v«— 


^ 


\mu»w~<\ 


^  i   r^-^ 


al  for  Death  in  the  Afternoon,  his  book  about  bullfighting. 
Ernest's  second  wife,  Pauline,  was  seven  months  pregnant  and 
no  doubt  resting  much  of  the  time,  and  Jane's  husband,  Grant, 
likely  made  himself  equally  unobtrusive  as  Hemingway  squired 
the  gorgeous  22-year-old  Jane  around  the  ship.  The  following 
spring,  leaving  Pauline  home  in  Key  West  with  the  new  baby, 
Ernest  took  a  10-day  marlin-fishing  trip  to  Havana  which 
stretched  out  to  two  months. 

"Ernest  loves  Jane,"  someone— perhaps  Ernest's  sister  Carol- 
wrote  in  the  log  of  the  Anita,  Hemingway's  chartered  boat.  Lov- 
ing Jane  would  not  have  been  hard  to  do.  The  New  York  Evening 
Journal  noted  in  1933  that  her  "demure  appearance  is  belied 
by  a  breezy,  warm,  offhand  manner  that  turns  you  into  a  lifelong 
friend  within  ten  minutes  after  your  introduction."  Jane  was  the 
adopted  daughter  of  Maryland  multimillionaire  Lyman  Kendall, 
and  from  the  moment  of  her  debut  in  1926,  when  Mrs.  Calvin 
Coolidge  described  her  as  the  loveliest  girl  she'd  met  since  com- 
ing to  Washington,  she  was  a  radiant  object  of  attention.  She'd 
been  adored  in  various  publications  for  her  "Madonna-type"  fea- 
tures, for  being  "the  essence  of  all  that  can  ever  have  been  meant 
by  Southern  beauty,"  and  for  being  "an  ideal  bud,  not  at  all  the 
flapper  type."  The  sound-bite  version  of  Mrs.  Coolidge's  com- 
ment—"prettiest  girl  ever  to  enter  the  White  House"— followed 
her  everywhere.  Her  wedding  to  Grant  Mason  Jr.,  former  art  ed- 
itor of  the  Yale  Record,  cartoonist,  and  heir  to  the  legendary  for- 
tune of  Wall  Street  financier  James  Henry  "Silent"  Smith,  was 
reported  in  more  than  30  newspapers  and  magazines. 

"Clear  cut  as  a  cameo  is  her  Botticelli  beauty  of  pale  gold 
hair  and  wide  set  eyes  like  purple  pansies.  Her  flawless  skin  is 
delicate  as  a  wood  anemone,"  gushed  an  advertisement  for 
Pond's  Extract  creams  that  featured  photos  of  the  celebrated 
beauty.  Hemingway  clipped  the  ad  for  his  files,  and  later  would 
use  it  to  characterize  the  sexually  aggressive,  husband-shooting 
Margot  Macomber  in  "The  Short  Happy  Life  of  Francis  Ma- 
comber":  "She  was  an  extremely  handsome  and  well-kept  wom- 
an of  the  beauty  and  social  position  which  had,  five  years 
before,  commanded  five  thousand  dollars  as  the  price  of  en- 
dorsing, with  photographs,  a  beauty  product  which  she  had 
never  used." 

Mrs.  Coolidge  had  noted  that  Jane  was  a  very  interesting  person 
to  boot.  She  raced  whippets  and  was  a  fearless  horsewoman.  She 
had  serious  ambitions  to  become  an  artist— her  teacher  had  said 
that  she  had  the  potential  for  "genius,"  if  it  was  "not  allowed  to 
wither."  As  Hemingway  observed  about  Margot  Macomber,  "She 
had  a  very  perfect  oval  face,  so  perfect  that  you  expected  her  to 
be  stupid.  But  she  wasn't  stupid,  Wilson  thought,  no,  not  stupid." 

Grant  Mason  was  working  in  Havana  for  Pan 
American  Airways,  extending  the  airline's 
network  in  the  Caribbean  and  Latin  Amer- 
ica. Like  their  contemporaries  Sara  and 
Gerald  Murphy,  whom  F.  Scott  Fitzgerald 
fictionalized  in  Tender  Is  the  Night,  the  Ma- 
sons were  "beautiful  people,"  multilingual, 
social,  and  popular  with  their  foreign  neighbors.  The  villa 
they'd  designed  themselves,  next  to  a  country  club  and 
Ambassador  Harry  F  Guggenheim's  mansion  in  the 
fashionable  suburb  of  Jaimanitas,  was  staffed  with  a 
Chinese  cook,  a  Haitian  houseman,  a  Jamaican  maid, 
an  Italian  butler,  a  German  gardener,  and  a  Cuban 
chauffeur.  There  was  also  a  menagerie  of  pets,  in- 

VANITY     FAIR      I 


,  I  tobi mi. in,  a  Great  Dane,  a  Dalina- 

key,  a  fox,  a  skunk,  and  a  honey  hear. 

Considerable  artistic  talents,  Jane  reserved  part 

iOI  ■  !  Hie  house  lor  her  studio.  Jane's  socialite 

i  singei  of  Nemo  spirituals  known  to  her  drawing- 

ices  as  Bettj  Lee,  "the  Georgia  Peach,"  and  Jane 

cd  the  piano  and  the  harp.  She  organized  concerts 

and  wrote  sweet  melodies  with  a  trademark  hint  of  black  humor 

in  the  lyrics.  She  supported  Cuban  artists,  arranged  arts-and- 

i  raits  classes  lor  children,  and  opened  a  shop  to  sell  Cuban  art 

and  handicrafts.  She  made  a  bust  of  Hemingway  and  gave  him 

a  little  nun's  head  that  she  had  modeled;  Hemingway  in  return 

recommended  Cuban  artists  he  thought  she  would  like. 

When  Jane  left  for  New  York  for  a  brief  hospital  stay  in  the 
middle  of  their  first  season  of  fishing,  a  captivated  Ernest  sent  a 
telegram  from  all  the  crew  and  the  sea  too: 

\11(  ll\  SUERTE  DAUGHTER  WE  BURNING  AGUJA  ROE  AT  BOTH  ENDS 
CHURCH  AND  VOODOO  BUT  DO  HOPE  NOT  TOO  MUCH  DAMNED  PAIN 
SlOP  REMEMBER  ELEPHANT  NEVER  FORGETS  LOVE  ERNEST  CHARLES 
BRA  JOSIE  AND  ALL  THE  COCKEYED  GULF  YOUR  KINGDOM. 

Ernest  stayed  at  the  Hotel  Ambos  Mundos,  in  a  top-floor  room 
he  described  as  looking  out  "to  the  north,  over  the  old  cathedral, 
the  entrance  to  the  harbor,  and  the  sea,  and  to  the  east  to  Casa- 
blanca peninsula,  the  roofs  of  all  houses  in  between  and  the  width 
of  the  harbor."  He  would  later  boast  to  his  son  Jack  that  Jane 
had  climbed  through  the  transom  of  the  window  in  his  room  in 
order  to  be  with  him.  Standing  on  the  street  and  looking  five 
flights  up,  a  skeptic  might  consider  this  wishful  fantasy  on  Hem- 
ingway's part,  but  there  was  a  wide  ledge  beneath  the  top-floor 
windows,  and  Jane  was  agile  and  daring  and  completely  unafraid 
of  heights.  Once,  she  bet  a  pilot  that  she  could  stand  any  stunt 
he  performed  without  getting  sick,  and  she  won.  Many  years  lat- 
er, at  the  end  of  a  drunken  evening,  Ernest  told 
a  visitor  the  story  of  Jane's  climbing 
through  the  transom,  adding,  "What's  a 
man  supposed  to  do  when  a  beautiful 
woman  comes  in  and  he's  lying  there 
with  a  big  stiff?  What  would  you  do?" 

Jane  never  got  seasick  either,  unlike 
some  of  Ernest's  male  fishing  partners 
from  up  North,  and  she  could  hold  her 
liquor— "an  accomplishment  Ernest  openly 
admired,"  his  brother,  Leicester,  noted.  Ac- 
cording to  Leicester,  after  enough  daiquiris, 
Ernest  and  Jane  would  take  turns  driving  off- 
road  in  Jane's  little  sports  car,  playing  "chick- 
en" as  they  dodged  ditches,  cattle,  and  oxcarts. 
Whoever  could  go  longest  without  saying  "Slow 
down"  or  "Watch  out"  was  the' winner. 

ou  like  action,"  Ernest  wrote  her 

in  one  letter,  telling  her  about 

the  Cuban  riots  of  1933.  "You'd 

have  had  a  fine  time  . . .  really 

there  was  a  lot."  When  there 

was  no  action,  Jane  created  it. 

She  threw  parties  that  old 
men  in  Havana  would  remember  with  pleasure 
30  years  later.  She  had  pigeons  dyed  different 
colors  to  flutter  around  the  grounds.  She  had 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


UR  TIME  pa,,  |     -  -*• 

ing  party  on  Bimini  in  1935  with, 
eft,  painter  Henry  Strater,  Eva  von  Blixen, 
le  and  Emest  Hemingway,  and  Baroo  Bror 
liven.  Insets:  Hemingway  on  the  cover  of  Time, 

8,  1937;  Hemingway  with  Jane  Mason 
boat,  the  Pilar,  with  the  day's  catch,  in  the 
Jiown  picture  of  them  together. 


Qto  tablecloths  foi  .1  party  thai  also 

thentii   conga  line,  with  guests  carrying  lighted 

ling  over  the  goli  course  of  the  Jaimanitas  Qub  at 

.  oin     I  ine  and  ( Irani  could  rumba  so  well  that  the 

•  ii,  1  m  iiu  tubs  would  clear  the  lloor  to  watch  them. 

|'i..  thei  peoples'  needs  was  something  Jane  did 

elj  and  well,  When  fishing  with  Hemingway,  she  always 
arrived  with  lavish  provisions,  and  often  cooked  on  board. 
"Bring  some  sandwiches  and  don't  change  your  plans,"  Ernest 
responded  to  a  telegram  from  her  asking  to  fish  with  him  again 
that  first  spring.  A  few  months  later,  he  was  considering  having 
Ik-i  transport  his  new  fishing  rods  to  Key  West,  but  "felt  very 
badly  about  . . .  making  you  a  convenience —  You 
make  a  very  handsome  convenience  (French  and 
Italian  Vermouths,  manzanilla,  chicken  sandwich- 
es, etc.)  however." 

While  Jane  was  in  the  hospital  in  New  York, 
she  sent  a  pair  of  pink  flamingos  to  the  Heming- 
ways in  Key  West  for  their  anniversary.  In  the  years 
to  come,  she  would  shower  the  Hemingway  family 
with  gifts.  Earrings  for  Ernest's  sister  Carol.  New 
shoes  for  Ernest's  eldest  son,  Jack,  nicknamed  Bum- 
by.  A  new  coat  for  Ernest,  and  then  a  replacement 
when  that  one  was  lost  in  a  fire,  and  a  matching  one 
for  Pauline.  Pajamas  for  Pauline.  Bottles  of  absinthe. 
Magazines  and  racks  of  lamb.  Charms  for  good  luck. 
Caviar,  red  cabbage,  and  watermelon  arriving  on  Bim- 
ini  in  time  for  their  Fourth  of  July  picnic.  "Don't 
bother  with  a  lot  of  dainties,"  Pauline  once  wrote  her, 
"as  you  seem  to  be  the  only  dainty  we  haven't  got." 

The  entire  Hemingway  clan  appeared  to  glow  in 
Jane's  presence  and  to  feel  bereft  when  she  was  gone. 
"At  Key  West  we  missed  you  like  hell  and  considered 
you  a  damned  fine  girl,"  Ernest  wrote  as  Jane  and  Grant 
were  setting  off  on  a  business  trip  through  the  Caribbean 
in  1932.  And,  more  tenderly,  "Would  like  to  write  very 
funny  letter  full  of  splendid  cracks  but  instead  find  pen 
(Mr.  Chan  speaking)  wishing  you  a  lot  of  luck  and  send- 
ing much  love  . . .  and  take  good  care  of  yourself  daughter 
because  you  are  very  valuable." 

Even  for  Pauline,  life  away  from  the  Masons  was  "tamer 
now,  and  less  compelling."  They  were  glamour  incarnate. 
"Bring  all  your  jewels,  please,  Jane,  and  if  you  have  a  gold 
umbrella  Grant,"  Pauline  wrote.  Indeed,  despite  Jane's  obvi- 
ous attractiveness  to  her  husband,  Pauline  addressed  her  ar- 
dently, calling  her  "Little  flower  (greatly  appreciated)"  and 
"My  little  girl,"  and  signing  off,  "Your  loving  friend."  Per- 
haps it  was  self-defense.  Pauline  was  also  sure  to  mention 
Grant  warmly  in  almost  every  letter,  as  if  to  balance  the  at- 
tention Jane  and  Ernest  paid  to  each  other.  But  Grant  (whom 
Pauline  called  Jane's  "very  silent  partner")  didn't  write  to 
Pauline  the  way  Papa  wrote  to  Jane. 

Ernest's  letters  are  always  full  of  thanks,  but  by  the  end  of 
1936,  when  he  had  created  Helene  Bradley  in  Jane's  image  in  lb 
Have  and  Have  Not,  he  had  taken  a  dark  view  of  what  it  might 
mean  to  be  the  life  of  the  party,  to  be  always  "giving."  During  a 
party  scene  (later  cut  from  the  manuscript)  at  a  house  identical  in 
every  detail  to  the  Masons',  two  characters  debate  the  "whoredom" 
of  writers  and  others.  One  blames  it  on  "economic  conditions." 
Nonsense,  the  other  argues,  even  those  with  money  do  it:  "whor- 
ing" is  a  talent— "Helene  has  it"    for  pleasing  "the  right  people." 


At  the  end  of  October  1932,  Jane  boarded  l 
S.S   Europa  with  her  friends  Dorothy  Pan 
and  Robert   Benchley,  bound  for  LondJ 
where  she  intended  to  adopt  a  child.  ( nant 
then  promoting  Pan  Am's  new  Clipper  Shj 
which  had  wood-paneled  cabin  walls  inlaid 
veneer  to  look  like  Japanese  prints,  but  wll 
could  still  not  compete  with  steamship  travel  to  Europe.  Thj 
long,  leisurely,  elegant  transatlantic  voyages  seemed  to  inspiq 
sense  of  erotic  freedom  and  possibility.  The  previous  fall  Jane 
met  Hemingway;  on  this  trip  she  met  Richard 
Cooper,  a  dash- 


VANITY     FAIR 


"As  for  your  pal," 

Hemingway  wrote  Archibald 

MacLeish  about 

Jane  Mason,  "she  is  a  bitch  say  I 

and  am  documented." 


OLD  MAN  AND  THE  SEA 


I  Icmmgnay  pours  water  on 

himself  during!  a  fishing  trip  in  the 

late  1930s.  Insets:  photos  from  another 

30s  fishing  trip  showing,  /iy;//;  top, 

I 'a ii line  I  lemingna)  and  .lane  Mason 

•eiring  pointy  hats;  Jane  being  doused  by 

a  crew  member:  Ernest  ditto. 


g«Mlll|A  w         -  EQUESTED  TO  FAVOR  THE  CO*PA«Y  BY    CRITICISM  AND  SUGGESTION  CONCERNING  ITS  SERVICE 

j,^fVESTERN  UNION.  ^ 


\ 


s^ 


CABLEGRAM 


/* 


iX 


WCOMI   CARLTON,  PIIIIMN> 


I.   C.   WICL.CVCR.    r i-«r  vlCS-PMt 


« 


ed  at  40  Broad  Street  (Central  Cable  Office),  New  York,  N.  Y.  <™s 


*  / 


VAA43C  HAVANA  46  12 

NLT  MRS  GEORGE  GRANT  MAS0N=; 

DOCTORS    HOSPITAL    NEWY0RK= 


fj 


■   ■*> 


MUCHA  SUERTE  DAUGHTER  WE  BURNING  AGUJA  ROE  AT  BOTH  ENDS 
AND  VOODOO  BUT  DO  HOPE  NOT  TOO  MUCH  DAMNED  PAIN  STOP  RE 
ELEPHANT  NEVER  FORGETS  LOVE  ERNEST  CHARLES  BRA  JOSIE  AM 
THE  COCKEYED  GULF  YOUR  = 


I 


ME  TARZAN,  YOU  JANE 


Clockwise  from  left:  Jane  and 

Bror  von  Blixen,  whose  first  wife 

was  the  writer  lsak  Dinesen, 

in  Kenya,  1935;  a  1933  caricature 

of  Hemingway  by  Miguel  Covarrubias 

done  for  Vanity  Fair;  Jane  and 

Esquire  founder  Arnold  Gingrich, 

her  fourth  husband  and  Hemingway's 

onetime  editor,  late  1950s; 

a  still  from  the  1947  film 

The  Macomber  Affair,  with,  from  left, 

Robert  Preston,  Joan  Bennett 

(in  the  Jane  Mason-inspired  role), 

and  Gregory  Peck. 


iqpjf. 


-■ 


lonel  who  owned  a  coffee  plantation  in  Tanganyika 

I   i  .i  ,1    Mm. i    Amid  .1  social  whirl  in  I  .on- 

dinnei  party  thrown  for  "Prince  George  and 
■  again,  and  he  declared  ins  love  for  her. 
msidered  him  dangerous  enough  to  ask  him  to 
I  daughtei  again. 

Jane  i  urned  to  Havana  with  Antony,  the  little  boy  she  had 
adopted  in  i  ondon.  She  had  already  asked  Ernest  to  be  the 
hoy's  godfather,  (Her  own  godfather  was  Mark  Twain.)  But 
though  she  was  delighted  with  the  child,  maternal  patience  and 
consistency  did  not  come  naturally.  While  she  tried  to  settle  into 
domestic  life  in  Havana,  her  imagination  was  elsewhere  in  the 
wild  with  Cooper,  for  instance,  who  sent  her  seven  leopard  skins 
for  Christmas,  volunteering  more  if  she  needed  them  for  a  coat. 
A  few  months  later,  he  wrote  that  he'd  arranged  with  a  friend  to 
"shoot,  cure,  and  sent  to  you  in  Havana,  six  Grevy  stallion  [ze- 
bra |  skins.  So  you  must  be  a  terribly  patient  girl." 

In  January  1933,  Jane  got  a  telegram  from  Ernest,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  in  New  York  at  the  time  of  the  gallery  opening  of 
Jane's  protege,  Gabriel  Castagno.  Castagno  had  been  a  night 
watchman  in  a  Havana  warehouse  until  Jane  discovered  and  fi- 
nanced his  art.  Pauline  wanted  to  go  to  New  York,  too,  but  she 
couldn't  get  away  from  Key  West  quickly  enough  to  keep  up 
with  Jane,  who  arrived  for  the  show  two  days  after  receiving 
Ernest's  wire.  Once  again,  Jane  was  a  free  agent,  enjoying  the 
attention  of  two  men,  for  Dick  Cooper  also  turned  up.  Jane  in- 
troduced Dick  to  Ernest,  and  they  talked  of  safaris  and  big 
game.  But  both  no  doubt  had  a  smaller,  lithe  blonde  mammal 
in  their  sights.  Soon  Pauline  would  write  to  Ernest  that  she 
wanted  to  get  rid  of  all  her  physical  imperfections  before  re- 
turning to  Havana  the  next  summer:  "Thought  I  better,  Mrs. 
Mason  and  those  Cuban  women  are  so  lovely." 

Pauline  even  tried  becoming  a  blonde,  and  reported  glowing- 
ly to  Jane  on  the  results.  "You've  reestablished  my  confidence  in 
the  beauty  racket,"  she  boasted.  But  privately  Jane  herself  found 
the  beauty  racket  "hard  and  sometimes  a  little  bitter-making," 
claiming  in  her  writings  that  she  was  "fed  to  the  teeth,  with  be- 
ing even  a  minor  'beauty.'"  Nonetheless,  she  was  always  afraid 
that  beauty  would  abandon  her— that  "les  Hemingways  were 
witnesses  to  the  last  push  of  pulchritude  on  the  part  of  Mrs. 
M."  She  went  on  diets  and  hired  a  special  masseuse  to  pound 
the  fat  off  her.  She  kept  a  strict  record  of  the  circumference  of 
her  thighs.  When  she  bragged  that  she'd  gotten  down  to  118 
pounds,  Ernest  asked  her  to  send  pictures,  and  she  did. 

Back  in  Key  West  after  his  New  York  trip,  Hemingway  wrote 
cautiously  to  Jane  that  he  was  looking  forward  to  seeing  her 
and  Grant  again:  "Would  rather  see  you— the  both  of  youse  . . . 
than  to  get  fine  presents  sent  from  a  long  way  away."  Yet  it 
seems  unlikely  that  Grant,  whom  Ernest  later  characterized  to 
his  friend  the  writer  Archibald  MacLeish  as  "Husbandus  Amer- 
icanus  Yalemaniensus  Twirpi  Ciego"— this  last,  Spanish  for 
"blind"— was  someone  he  was  eager  to  see. 

That  spring,  Ernest  was  in  Havana  for  another  season  of 
marlin  fishing.  Grant,  nicknamed  "Old  Stoneface"  by  the  Hem- 
ingways, was  unintrusive  even  when  he  accompanied  Ernest  and 
Jane  drinking,  dancing,  and  gambling  at  her  favorite  club,  the  Sans 
Souci.  When  Pauline  arrived,  they  became  a  foursome,  fishing, 
drinking,  and  cracking  jokes.  In  their  letters,  Ernest,  Jane,  and 
Pauline  frequently  made  in-jokes  about  drinking— or  not  drink- 
ing, for  Jane  was  always  on  and  off  the  o>ntinih  d  on  i>a<,i   no 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


The  Sorrow 

and 
the  Beauty 


e  Berry  has  soi 


of  the  same  cinematic  qualities  as  the  groundbreaking  i 
tress  Dorothy  Dandridge.  Cinnamon-skinned  and  sink 
beautiful,  each  was  blessed  with  the  kind  of  talent  that  c 
enhance  such  beauty  by  highlighting  its  glittering  alh 
while  mining  its  soulful  depths.  Who  better  to  portray  the 
tie  character  in  next  month's  HBO  feature  movie  Dorot 
Dandridge— based  on  the  biography  by  Dandridge's  m< 
ager,  Earl  Mills— than  the  luminous  Miss  Berry?  A  Revl 
spokesperson,  Berry  last  wowed  audiences,  and  Warr 
Beatty,  in  Bu/worfh. 

Dandridge's  mother,  the  actress  Ruby  Dandridge,  I 
her  husband,  who  was  a  minister,  when  Dorothy  was 
an  infant.  Ruby  and  her  lesbian  lover,  known  as  Aunt 
raised  Dorothy  through  the  1920s  and  30s.  A  sul 
nightclub  singer  in  the  mode  of  Lena  Home  and  Eart 
Kitt,  Dandridge  went  on  to  make  more  than  20  films 
America  and  Europe.  She  was  the  first  African-Americ 
woman  to  be  nominated  for  a  best-actress  Acader 
Award,  for  her  1954  performance  in  Carmen  Jones, 
though  mezzo-soprano  Marilyn  Home  dubbed  her  voi 
in  this  Americanized  update  by  Oscar  Hammerstein  II 
Bizet's  Carmen.  Her  other  great  success  was  in  the  sere 
version  of  Porgy  and  Bess,  but  there  were  also  many  pi 
lie  heartaches:  two  failed  marriages;  a  complicated  lo 
affair  with  Otto  Preminger,  who  directed  her  in  both  Carm 
Jones  and  Porgy  and  Bess;  the  institutionalization  of 
only  daughter;  bankruptcy;  and  drug  and  alcohol  add 
tions  which  culminated  in  her  death  from  an  overdose 
barbiturates  just  before  she  was  scheduled  to  make 
comeback  nightclub  appearance  in  1965  at  Basin  Stre 
East  in  New  York. 

"I  was  always  aware  of  the  doors  she  opened  for  bla 
actresses,"  says  Berry.  "But  so  many  people  don't  know  abc 
her.  She  was  our  Marilyn  Monroe."       —KEVIN  SESSl^ 

PHOTOGRAPH     BY      FIROOZ      ZAHEDI 


i 


BLUES    BERRY 


Halle  Berry  on  the 

of  HBO's  film  biography 

f  Dorothy  Dandridge, 

t  African-American  woman  to 

be  nominated  for  a  best-actress 

Academy  Award,  for 

her  performance  in  Carmen 

Jones  in  1954. 


!pr 


THE 
GOLDEN  BEAR 


JACK  NICKLAUS,  5 


His  grandkids  call  him  PeePaw.  To  the  rest  of  us, 

he's  the  Golden  Bear— a  nickname  he  earned  as  a  stocky  k 

with  a  tight  blond  crew  cut  who  brazenly  wrested  the 

1962  U.S.  Open  from  His  Majesty  Arnold  Palmer. 

Today,  Jack  Nicklaus  is  thought  of  as  simply  the  best  who  evt 

picked  up  a  golf  club.  No  one  can  claim  more  major 

titles,  including  three  British  Opens,  four  U.S.  Opens,  and  five  P.G.A. 

Championships.  Ask  his  golden  retriever,  Cali,  how  many 

times  Daddy's  won  the  Masters  and  she'll  bark  six  times. 

He  is  also  one  of  the  game's  most  respected  golf-course  designers 

(170  in  two  dozen  nations),  as  well  as  a  world-class 

fisherman.  Check  out  the  1,358-pound  black  marlin  hanging  in 

his  guesthouse.  "I  don't  have  any  illusions  of  coming  back 

and  competing  with  the  Tiger  Woodses  and  David  Duvals," 

Nicklaus,  now  on  the  rebound  from  recent  hip-replacement  surgery, 

has  said.  "But  if  I  can  just  scare  them  every  once 

in  a  while,  that  will  be  fine." 

Photographed  at  home  aboard  his  80-foot  Sea  Bear, 

near  his  private  putting  green  (near  n'ghf)  in  North  Palm 

Beach,  Florida,  on  March  24,  1999. 


Their  names  form  a  glorious  roster  of  golfs  American  Century: 

passionate  pioneers  such  as  Sam  Snead,  Gene  Sarazen,  and  Patty  Berg  giving 

way  to  fresh  legends — Arnold-Palmer,  Jack  Nicklaus,  Nancy  Lopez — 

who  are  now  letting  a  new  generation,  led  by  top-ranked  David  Duval 

and  phenomenon  Tiger  Woods,  play  through.  Photographer  MICHAEL  O'NEILL 

captures  the  form  of  16  of  the  games  greatest  champions,  past  and  future; 

while  SCOTT  GIMMER  checks  their  scorecards 


SiYitO~n     TINA     SKOURAS 


THE 
BLACK  KNIGHT 

GARY  PLAYER,  63 

"I  didn't  want  to  be  poor."  With  that  goal  as  motivation, 

Gary  Player  worked  his  way  out  of  an  impoverished  childhood  in 

South  Africa  to  become  golf's  consummate  international  champion. 

Arguably  the  world's  most  traveled  athlete,  he  has  spent 

a  total  of  three  years  on  airplanes  over  the  course  of  his  career,  logging  more 

than  12  million  miles,  equivalent  to  25  round-trips  to  the  Moon. 

Told  by  his  father  that  he  needed  a  trademark,  Player  adopted  his  dashing 

black  wardrobe  in  the  late  1950s,  a  tribute  to  his  TV  hero,  Paladin, 

from  Have  Gun  Will  Travel.  Back  home  in  Johannesburg, 

he  raises  Thoroughbred  racehorses,  runs  a  school  for  400  underprivileged 

black  students,  and  is  an  innovator  in  golf-club  design.  On  a  recent 

road  trip,  when  a  reporter  asked  Player  what  he  would  do 

if  he  had  to  choose  between  Vivienne,  his  wife  of  42  years,  and  his  sleek 

new  No.  1  wood,  he  replied,  "I  sure  would  miss  her." 

Upon  returning  to  his  hotel,  Player  found  his  beloved  club  on  the  bed, 

draped  in  a  slinky  negligee. 

Photographed  under  Balboa  Pier  in  Newport  Beach, 
California,  on  March  9,  1999. 


THE 
GENTLEMAN 


BYRON  NELSON,  87 

Like  most  players  of  his  era, 

Byron  Nelson  came  up  through  the  caddie 

ranks,  pocketing  50  cents  a  round;  at  15, 

he  won  his  club's  caddie  championship 

in  a  playoff  match  against  another  talented  young 

Texan,  named  Ben  Hogan.  He  turned 

pro  during  the  Depression,  when  the  tour  was 

a  traveling  circus.  "We  all  caravanned 

from  one  stop  to  the  next,"  he  remembers 

fondly.  "If  someone  got  a  flat  tire,  everyone  pulled 

over."  Then  came  1945,  Nelson's 

magic  season.  In  all  of  sport,  his  1 1  consecutive 

tournament  victories  stand  as  one  of 
the  records  most  likely  to  endure.  He  went  on 
to  collect  18  titles  and  earn  $63,000 
that  year— most  of  it  paid  in  War  Bonds- 
then  abruptly  retired.  The  most 
genteel  of  champions,  Nelson  rarely  plays  18 
anymore,  preferring  to  tinker  in  the  woodshop  on 
his  750-acre  cattle  ranch,  bought  with 
the  fruits  of  that  summer  of  '45. 

Photographed  at  his  Fairway  Ranch  in  Roanoke, 
Texas,  on  March  17,  1999. 


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THE 
HUNTERS 


ERNIE  ELS,  29,  AND  LEE  WESTWOOD,  26 

They  are  young  and  hungry,  from  distant  shores, 
ing  Tiger  and  setting  their  sights  on  David  Duval's  No.  1 

world  ranking   Two-time  U.S.  Open  victor  Ernie  Els 
eft),  g  .burly,  six-foot-three  South  African,  fired  a  warning 
shot  earlier  this  year  at  L.A.'s  Nissan  Open  when  he 
rcame  final-round  challenges  by  both  Woods  and  Duval. 

British  upstart  Lee  Westwood,  who  won  seven 
tournaments  in  six  countries  last  year,  contends  that 
mg  in  [more  adverse]  conditions  overseas  makes  us  better 
fighters"  than  his  Yankee  prey.  Seemingly  at  ease  in 
his  Florida  swamp  (home  to  alligators  and  poisonous 
Monmouth  snakes).  Els  concurs.  "International  golfers," 
he  says,  "are  tougher  than  Americans." 

Photographed  in  Ponte  Vedra  Beach, 
Florida,  on  March  23,  1999. 


r 

^^^  -^^^^  olf  is  different.  There  are  no  lockouts, 
as  in  basketball.  Players  don't  strike  and  force  the  shutdown  of  the 
U.S.  Open  the  way  baseball  players  scuttled  the  World  Series  in 
1994.  And  golfers  don't  drop  their  gloves  and  pummel  one  another 
like  hockey  thugs  (although  the  idea  of  contact  golf  is  intriguing). 

Golf  is  hot.  The  game  of  kings— once  an  exclusively  Scottish  pas- 
time, then  a  rich  man's  diversion— is  now  a  game  of  the  people.  Se- 
curing a  Saturday  tee  time  on  a  decent  municipal  course  is  about 
as  tough  as  landing  a  table  at  Rao's.  Driving  ranges  are  standing- 
room-only  venues.  And  programs  such  as  the  First  Tee  are  intro- 
ducing golf  to  inner-city  kids,  who  might  otherwise  never  have  the 
opportunity  to  experience  the  gratifying  whoosh  of  a  pitching 
wedge  grazing  a  patch  of  Bermuda  grass. 

Pro  golf  is  huge.  For  the  first  time,  every  P.G.A.  tour  event  will 
be  televised  this  year,  and  ratings  now  routinely  eclipse  those  of 
N.B.A.  broadcasts.  Tournament  galleries  have  swelled  and  taken  on 
a  distinctly  Happy  Gilmore  complexion:  Every  year,  40,000  fans, 
mistaking  the  Phoenix  Open  for  spring  break,  cram  around  the 
par-3  16th  hole  and  howl  after  each  player's  tee  shot.  When  Tiger 
Woods  drilled  a  hole  in  one  there  two  years  ago,  the  horde  littered 
the  tee  box  with  beer  cups  like  hockey  fans  after  a  hat  trick.  Even 
at  stately  Augusta  National,  home  of  the  Masters,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men in  shirts  with  country-club  crests  share  the  rope  line  with  guys 
in  tank  tops  wearing  their  ball  caps  backward. 

The  more  things  change,  the  more  golf  stays  the  same.  Yes,  hick- 
ory shafts,  persimmon  woods,  and  balls  made  of  feathers  packed  in 
leather  pouches  have  gone  the  way  of  the  horsecar,  now  replaced, 
in  turn,  by  graphite,  titanium,  and  liquid  fillings.  And  yet  the  four- 
round  score  of  276  that  Ernie  Els  shot  to  capture  the  1997  U.S. 
Open  is  precisely  the  tally  that  Ben  Hogan  carded  in  winning  the 
same  tournament  a  half-century  before. 

Golf  is  special.  Its  fans  can  literally  put  themselves  in  their  he- 
roes' shoes.  You  and  your  friends  can't  play  three-on-three  in  Madi- 
son Square  Garden  or  softball  in  Wrigley  Field.  But  you  can  shoot 
a  round  at  Pebble  Beach,  walking  the  same  hallowed  ground  and 
hitting  from  the  exact  spot  where  Tiger  tees  it  up.  You  can  play  golf 
with  anyone,  at  any  age,  anywhere— from  the  top  of  the  world 
(where  you  can  duff  under  the  midnight  sun  near  Alaska's  Denali 
National  Park)  to  the  Horn  of  Africa  (where  players  at  Sun  City's 
Leopard  Creek  share  the  course  with  lions  and  elephants). 

Golf  is  ageless.  At  that  stage  in  life  when  many  jocks  are  strug- 
gling to  squeeze  one  more  year  out  of  their  careers,  many  golfers 
are  just  hitting  their  prime.  Michael  Jordan,  possibly  the  greatest 
athlete  of  modern  times  (and  a  certified  golfaholic),  was  praised  for 
displaying  rare  grace  and  good  sense  upon  retiring  from  basketball 
this  year  at  the  tender  age  of  35.  By  contrast,  golf's  Jack  Nicklaus, 
often  rated  the  game's  greatest  player  ever,  won  18  tour  events,  in- 
cluding two  Masters,  two  P.G.A.  Championships,  a  British  Open, 
and  a  U.S.  Open— all  after  turning  35. 

Golf  doesn't  put  players  out  to  pasture  (unless  you  happen  to 
shank  your  shot  onto  a  neighboring  farm).  And  that,  more  than 
anything,  is  the  sport's  true  beauty.  No  matter  how  old  you  get,  you 
never  lose  your  drive.  It  just  takes  you  longer  to  score. 


VANITY     FAIR 


THE  FIRST  LAi 
AND  THE  PATRIARC 


PATTY  BERG,  81, 

AND  GENE  SARAZEN,  97 

(SARAZEN  DIED  ON  MAY  13,  1999) 


He  hit  the  most  famous  golf  shot  in  history,  a  235-yard 

double  eagle  at  Augusta  in  1935  that  helped  firmly  establish  the  Ma 

then  in  its  second  year.  She  won  the  inaugural  U.S.  y/omen's 

Open  in  1946.  He  was  the  first  golfer  to  gain  a  career  Grand  Slam  by 

taking  the  Masters,  the  P.G.A.,  and  both  the  British  and  U.S.  Opens. 

She  still  holds  the  women's  mark  for  most  major  victories— 15. 

She  locked  irons  with  Babe  Didrikson  Zaharias.  He  did  battle  with  Bobby  Jones. 

She  was  the  first  president  of  the  L.P.G.A.  He  invented  the  sand  wedge. 
Says  Patty  Berg  of  her  stylish,  competitive  friend  Gene  Sarazen,  "I  watched  him 

play  when  I  was  13  or  14,  a  little  girl  in  Minneapolis.  I  asked  for  his 

autograph.  He  inspired  me.  Gene  had  this  will  to  win."  When  he  passed  away 

in  May,  following  a  bout  with  pneumonia,  "the  Squire,"  as  he 

was  known,  represented  nearly  a  century  of  dedication  to  a  game 

invented  half  a  millennium  ago. 

Photographed  outside  Sarazen's  home  on  Marc 
Florida,  on  March  25,  1999. 


THE 
LEADING  LADIES 

NANCY  LOPEZ,  42,  AND  SE  Rl  PAK,  21 

ler  hands  the  golf  club  has  been  a  magic  wand,  transporting 

ng  Nancy  Lopez  from  her  New  Mexico  home  to  fairy-tale  places 

like  Buckingham  Palace,  where,  at  19,  she  experienced 

trie  ultimate  tea  party  with  the  Queen.  Buoyed  by  an  irrepressible  game 

and  an  irresistible  smile,  she  captured  nine  tournaments 

her  first  full  year  on  tour,  including  an  L.P.G. A. -record  five  in  a  row. 

Today,  competing  year-round  and  tending  to  a  three-child, 

two-jock  household  (her  husband  is  former  New  York  Mets  star  Ray  Knight), 

Lopez  (above,  left)  is  the  dominant  female  player  of  her  generation. 

Charging  up  history's  fairway  is  South  Korean-born, 

Orlando-based  Se  Ri  Pak,  who  last  year  won  the  first  two  majors  she  entered. 

What  keeps  champions  like  these  from  achieving  the  fame  enjoyed 

by  their  male  counterparts?  The  tube,  says  Lopez.  "If  we 

were  on  TV  every  week,  women's  golf  would  be  just  as  popular," 

she  insists.  "Probably  more." 

Photographed  at  the  North  Mountain  Recreation  Area 
in  Phoenix,  Arizona,  on  March  16,  1999. 


THE 

FOUR  HORSEMEN 

OF  THE 

MILLENNIUM 

PHIL  MICKELSON,  29, 

DAVID  DUVAL,  27,  JUSTIN  LEONARD,  27, 

AND  JIM  FURYK,  29 

They  personify  the  power,  youth,  and 

supremely  confident  style  of  golf  in  the  next  century. 

Among  them,  they  have  earned  close  to  $30  million  and 

tasted  victory  more  than  30  times— all  before  their 

30th  birthdays.  Mickelson  (far  left)  has  hoisted 

the  most  trophies— 13— but  the  hottest  player  of  the  year 

has  been  Duval  (second  from  left),  who  supplanted 

Tiger  Woods  this  spring  as  the  world's  highest-ranked  pro  by 

winning  11  of  his  previous  34  tournaments.  (By  tax  day, 

Duval  had  eclipsed  the  record  $2.5  million  in  annual 

prize  money  he  had  set  last  year.)  Leonard  (second  from  right) 

is  the  lone  gun  among  them  to  have  claimed  a  major, 
the  1997  British  Open.  And  Furyk  (above),  the  most  consistent 

top-10  finisher  on  the  tour  over  the  past  two  seasons, 

speaks  for  this  brash,  all-American  foursome  when  comparing 

today's  ranks  with  those  of  yesteryear: 

"The  competition  is  so  much  stiffer  now.  Any  given  week, 

anyone  can  win."  Observes  the  steely  Duval,  "The  thing  that 

separates  good  golfers  from  the  greats  is  not  just  being 

comfortable  when  you  are  in  position  to  win. 

You  have  to  thrive  on  it." 

Photographed  at  the  Kapalua  Bay  Hotel  on  Maui, 
Hawaii,  on  January  6,  1999. 


THE  MAN 


TIGER  WOODS,  T,     I 


He  uses  the  Force.  How  else  can  you  explai 

so  many  clutch  shots  that  seem  to  bend  toward  th 

pin  in  midair  or  roll  that  extra  tick  before  tricklin< 

into  the  cup?  How  else  can  you  fathom  golf 

most  explosive  debut:  an  unprecedented  12-strok 

romp  at  the  1997  Masters  by  a  21-year-oli 

rookie?  And  yet,  like  most  young  warriors,  he  i    I 

raw.  On  those  occasions  when  the  ball  doe 

not  obey,  he  has  been  known  to  pound  his  clu 

into  the  turf  and  mutter  expletives  withi 

earshot  of  a  gallery  or  microphone.  With  time 

he  will  harness  these  emotions  of  the  Dark  Side 

Only  then  may  Tiger  Woods  fulfill  a  prophec 

made  by  Jack  Nicklaus  and  go  on  to  wi 

more  Masters  green  jackets  than  NicklaL) 

and  Arnold  Palmer  combined  (1  dowi' 

10  to  go).  Indeed,  the  force  of  his  personality 

youth,  and  race  have  helped  invigoraf 

an  entire  sport.  Not  bad  for  a  kii 

who  started  out  delighting  audience. 

in  a  putting  contest  against  Bob  Hope  ol 

The  Mike  Douq/as  Show.  At  age  two 

1 

Photographed  in  Cypress,  Californio 

on  January  1J 


THE 
SLAMMER 


SAM  SNEAD,  87 

As  a  Virginia  farm  boy,  he  learned 
the  game  tromping  barefoot  in  a  pasture, 

swinging  clubs  fashioned  from 
swamp-maple  limbs.  "One-stroke  penalty 
if  you  raked  it  out  of  a  cow  pie  instead 
of  playing  it  where  it  lied,"  he  recalls. 
Blessed  with  a  supple  swing  that  thundered 
out  drives  like  cannonade, 
"Slammin'  Sam"  Snead  was  as  adept 
und  the  green  as  he  was  long 
se.  He  won  tournaments  across  six 
is  and  set  marks  for  most  victories 
itouchable  81);  eldest  champion 
i  official  tournament  (52  years 
hs);  and  first  to  shoot  his  age  (67), 
a  feat  he  still  does  regularly, 
ly  only  regret,"  confides  the  indomitable 
Snead,  "is  I  came  along  too  soon  for  the 
big  money  these  flippy-wristed,  flat-bellied 
boys  are  playing  for  nowadays." 

Photographed  at  the 

Hilton  Hotel  on  Marco  Island,  Florid 

on  February  17,  1999. 


,«C 


Sputnik  soared.  Elvis  shimmied.  And  golf  on  TV  was 
about  as  compelling  as  a  test  pattern.  Then  came  Arnold  Palmer, 

giving  Americans  a  reason  to  watch  and  a  hero  to  cheer. 
Like  a  gunslinger  right  out  of  his  beloved  Westerns,  Palmer  played 

with  a  swagger  and  an  unbridled  passion  that  unnerved 

opponents  and  endeared  him  to  fans.  To  this  day,  battalions  from 

"Arnie's  Army"  line  fairways  whenever  he  tees  off.  The  first  golfer  to 

win  $100,000  in  a  season  and  $1  million  in  o  career, 

Palmer  practically  invented  the  hyphenate  "athlete-endorser." 

He  continues  to  pursue  his  other  boyhood  obsession— aviation-having 

circumnavigated  the  globe  in  a  Learjet  36  in  a  world-record-setting 

57  hours  25  minutes.  "If  it  wasn't  for  flying,  I  wouldn't  be 

playing  golf  today,"  the  King  remarked  at  the  height  of  his  reign. 

"I  loathe  driving  2,000  miles  every  Monday." 


Photographed  on  his  Cessna  Citation  X  in  the 

"Palmer  Hangar"  at  Florida's  Orlando  International  Airport 

on  February  10,  1999. 


mill) 


instructed  the 
d     none  <>/  thai    Dad    call 

<^J  until  is  a  niinoi  image  of  his  own  par- 
Oents,  doting  taskmasters  who  never  suf- 
fered  fools.  His  mother,  Caroline,  worked 
fol  the  school  board  in  West  Philadelphia, 
where  her  four  children  were  actually  pun- 
ished lor,  in  essence,  speaking  jive. 

YOUNG  win:  What  ch'all  'bout  to  do? 
CAROI  ink  Get  back  in  this  house. 

Will's  father.  Will  senior,  spent  part  of 
his  time  as  a  refrigerator  and  air-conditioner 
installer  and  part  of  his  time  hustling.  Hus- 
tling in  the  good  sense  or  the  bad  sense? 
"A  little  bit  of  both,"  Will  says,  laughing. 
"My  father  will  make  it  happen.  My  father, 
you  know,  makes  a  deal  with  the  butch- 
er... .  My  father's  one  of  those  guys  who'll 
fix  it.  He'll  have  a  look  and  say,  'It's  gonna 
be  hot  soon— you  know,  that  air  conditioner 
may  not  be  working,  so  get  me  some 
shanks  goin'.'" 

Smith  attended  a  largely  white  middle 
school,  where  he  excelled  at  two  difficult 
skills:  math  and  making  white  people  laugh. 
In  10th  grade  he  moved  to  predominantly 
black  Overbrook  High  School,  where  he 
excelled  at  math  and  making  black  people 
laugh.  "I  wasn't  funny  in  10th  grade,"  says 
Smith,  who  as  a  teenager  idolized  Eddie 
Murphy,  the  one  man  who  still  intimidates 
Smith.  "I  started  being  funny  again  in  11th 
grade."  That's  when  Smith's  mathematical 
and  comedic  skills  seamlessly  dovetailed 
into  his  seminal  contribution  to  the  meta- 
physics of  comedy,  the  Number-One  An- 
swer, which  he  defines  as  "the  joke  that's 
right  down  the  middle— that  black  people 
think  is  hilarious  and  white  people  think  is 
hilarious,  but  for  two  different  reasons," 
which  we  will  discuss  in  a  moment. 

First,  a  few  words  about  the  math,  which 
remains  one  of  Smith's  feverish  obsessions 
(others  being  chess,  grammar,  and  loud 
music).  Virtually  everything  that  Smith  does 
has  a  mathematical  root  or  by-product,  and 
to  him  the  world  is  one  large  equation. 
"The  beauty  of  math  is  that  numbers  are 
nature's  only  perfection,"  he  explains.  "Num- 
bers are  never  wrong.  Only  you're  wrong. 
You  can  make  a  mistake  with  the  numbers, 
but  the  numbers  are  never  wrong.  I  think 
about  my  life  and  my  situations  mathemat- 
ically. There's  a  comfort  in  knowing,  like, 
what  are  the  chances  of  this  happening? 
O.K.,  the  chances  are  one  in  a  million.  If 
the  chances  are  one  in  a  million  that  I'll  be 
the  president  of  the  United  States,  the 
chances  are  one  in  a  million.  If  you  don't 
win  the  presidency,  that's  what's  expected. 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


And  il  sou  do  you  re  the  best  person  in  the 
world."  Smith  therefore  sees  no  reason  why 
he  can't  be  president,  Statistically  speaking. 
I  absolutely  believe  I  could  be  the  presi- 
dent  Ol  the  United  States,"  he  says.  "I  be- 
lieve that  if  .  .  .  that's  what  I  wanted  to  do 
with  my  life,  I  could  win." 

Smith  was  so  good  with  numbers  that 
his  mother  wangled  him  an  interview  at 
M.I.T  The  interview  went  so-so,  but  one 
problem  remained:  Smith  didn't  want  to  go 
to  M.I.T.  (which,  conveniently,  may  not 
have  wanted  him).  He  wanted  to  . . .  rap. 
And  here  it's  important  to  note  that  when 
Smith  was  a  high-school  senior,  in  1986, 
rap  was  still  a  nascent  movement  whose 
top  performer  was  the  legendarily  under- 
appreciated Kurtis  Blow.  Smith,  whom 
friends  called  "Little  Willy  from  Philly" 
even  though  he  is  six  feet  two,  somehow 
persuaded  his  parents  to  give  him  a  year  to 
make  good.  One  year  later,  under  the  tute- 
lage of  a  then  obscure  producer  named 
Russell  Simmons,  Smith  and  his  buddy  DJ 
Jazzy  Jeff  Townes  released  Rock  the  House, 
which  sold  600,000  copies.  By  1992  they 
had  scored  two  platinum  albums  and  a 
major  crossover  hit,  "Parents  Just  Don't 
Understand,"  which  almost  certainly  was 
the  first  rap  song  to  be  regularly  played  at 
white  suburban  keg  parties. 

Smith  and  Townes  celebrated  the  way 
that  all  young  stars  celebrate:  by  blowing 
their  money  on  jewelry,  houses,  vacations, 
cars,  a  private  shopping  spree  at  Gucci.  "I 
don't  think  you  can  say  that  because  some- 
one is  young  that  what  they  did  wasn't 
dumb,"  he  explains.  "It  was  still  dumb.  You 
were  just  19."  The  idiocy  was  short-lived, 
and  soon  Smith  was  signed  to  do  a  TV 
pilot  called  The  Fresh  Prince  of  Bel-Air, 
about  a  young  rapper  from  Philadelphia 
who  moves  in  with  rich  relatives  in  Los 
Angeles. 

The  night  before  his  first  rehearsal,  while 
flipping  through  bad  cable-TV  shows,  it 
occurred  to  Smith  that  he  had  no  reason  to 
believe  he  had  any  acting  ability  ("No  one 
ever  asked"),  and  Smith's  second  theory  of 
comedy  was  born.  That  would  be  the  Delu- 
sional Hook,  roughly  defined  as  the  one 
thought  or  concept  that  gives  you  the  balls 
to  succeed  at  something  that  scares  the  hell 
out  of  you.  Predictably,  the  theory  is  math- 
ematical. O.K.,  Smith  told  himself.  The  sta- 
tistical likelihood  is  that  I'm  somewhere  in 
the  middle  of  all  these  lousy  actors  I'm 
watching.  If  there's  any  luck  involved,  I'm 
in  the  top  40  percent.  And  then,  if  I  really 
work  hard,  I  move  into  the  top  30— and 
they're  making  a  living.  "A  weird  comfort 
washed  over  me,"  Smith  recalls. 

The  show  was  a  hit,  despite  the  fact  that 
Smith  was  so  green  and  excitable  that  he 


; 


would  mouth  other  actors'  lines  while  tb  P 
spoke  them  a  nervous  habit  that's  plah  * 
visible  on  reruns.  Smith  somehow  charm  *h 
his  way  into  the  film  adaptation  of  I  s': 
Degrees  of  Separation,  Guare's  celebrat  " 
Broadway  comedy,  based  on  a  real  sto  r<l 
about  a  con  man  named  Paul,  who,  in  >  '* 
der  to  impress  a  bunch  of  pompous  Upp  P 
East  Side  swells,  passes  himself  off  as  t  " 
son  of  Sidney  Pokier.  Smith's  performac  ' 
was  universally  praised,  but  this  was  no  E- 
happy  time.  "It  was  the  only  film  I  c  [ 
that  I  didn't  have  fun,"  recalls  Smith,  w  f' 
says  he  became  just  a  bit  too  consum  i- 
with  becoming  Paul.  "Just  completely  1  ^-: 
myself— to  the  point  that  when  I  cai  r 
back  to  The  Fresh  Prince  the  next  yeai  ' : 
wasn't  funny.  I  couldn't  tell  a  joke  to  s<  f-: 
my  life." 

Smith  has  faced  few  bouts  of  measural  f 
controversy  in  his  professional  life,  but 
Degrees  of  Separation  was  one  of  them, 
the  play  (and  in  the  filmscript),  Paul 
dulges  in  a  deep  kiss  with  a  male  pick 
but  at  the  last  minute  Smith  balked  and 
stead  insisted  on  one  of  those  fake,  filing 
from-the-back  kisses  favored  by  straij 
actors  playing  gay  roles.  Smith  was  roui 
ly  criticized  for  the  cop-out,  which,  he 
plained,  was  a  panic  move  triggered  by    | 
fear  that  Trey  would  get  teased  at  scho  W 
He  regrets  it  today.  "That  was  a  rea  P 
weird  point  in  my  life,"  he  says,  perhi  P 
referring  to  his  ill-fated  marriage  to  a  wo 
an  named  Sheree  Zampino,  Trey's  moth  •> l! 
They  divorced  in   1995,  shortly  beft  P 
Smith  began  seeing  Pinkett-Smith,  wh<  P 
he  married  in  1997. 

k 

After  that— actually,  the  whole  wo  Ir» 
knows  what  happened  after  that,  sir  P ' 
the  whole  world  saw  his  next  four  films  P-' 
pack  of  ceaselessly  explosive  crowd-please  &  ■ 
Bad  Boys,  Independence  Day,  Men  in  Bla  '  B| 
and  the  underrated  conspiracy  picture  E  W 
my  of  the  State.  Despite  his  consistent  ba  ■ 
ability,  until  recently  Smith  was  never  > 
first  choice  of  studio  executives— for  Mer,  i  \ 
Black,  the  suits  (including  executive  prod  ■ 
er  Steven  Spielberg)  wanted  to  cast  ...  CI  I 
O'Donnell,  the  preppyish  actor. 

This,  says  director  Barry  Sonnenfe  ■« 
would  not  stand.  "I  had  to  sort  of  c<  p 
vince  Chris  that  the  project  was  not  go 
to  be  very  good,"  says  Sonnenfeld. 
that  he  isn't  a  great  actor— it's  just  thalw 
needed  Will."  He  explains:  "I  live  in  E  I 
Hampton,  Long  Island,  and  Steven  Sp  '■■ 
berg  has  a  house  there.  Will  was  coming  ;  I 
to  New  York  for  a  wedding,  and  we  * 
ranged  for  a  helicopter  to  fly  in  to  Long  1 
land.  What  happened,  I  think,  was  t  to 
Steven's  kids  told  Steven  that  Will  wa:  ■ 
really  hip,  cool  guy." 

Since  then,  Smith  and  Sonnenfeld  h 
forged  an  unusually  close  bond  which     ■ 


I 
I  Hi 


ght  us  their  current  action-comedy  ex- 
ganza,  Wild  Wild  West,  based  on  the 
50s  TV  Western  starring  Robert  Con- 
is  retro-cool  cowboy  James  West.  Smith, 
will  never  be  mistaken  for  Robert 
rad,  was  cast  as  West;  Kevin  KJine 
;  his  sidekick,  Artemus  Gordon,  and 
leth  Branagh  and  Salma  Hayek  also 
"Will  is  the  only  actor  with  whom  I 
worked  who  is  preternaturally  chipper 

1  arriving  on  the  set  at  six  a.m.,"  says 
;.  "Will  is  a  great  comedy  partner, 
her  he  has  the  set-up 
3r  the  punch  line." 
iddie  Murphy  said  it 
e  10  years  ago,"  Smith 
when  asked  about  the 
enges  presented  by  his 
:  film.  "He  said,  'Cool 

funny  don't  mix.' 

it  didn't  dawn  on  me 

this  film Sexy  and 

y  is  an  even  worse 
...  I  really  wasn't  pre- 
d  for  that.  I  got  onto 
>et  and  started  realiz- 
that  I  was  having  to 

2  a  decision  between 
cool,  or  funny."  Ulti- 

:ly  Smith  attempted 
and  left  it  for  the  gift- 
onnenfeld  to  sort  out 
e  editing  room. 

le  film  will  be  re- 
eased  on  what  has 
Ticially  become  Will 
h  Weekend,  July  4, 
already  there  have 
I  rumblings  that  the 
;ct  went  wildly  over- 
set, that  the  response  from  test  audi- 
|  was  tepid,  that  last-minute  re-shoots 
;  required.  While  the  last  is  certainly 
-Smith  was  filming  re-shoots  during 
nterviews  with  this  magazine— no  one 
confirm  how  much  the  film  cost  (al- 
igh  both  Sonnenfeld  and  Smith  laugh 
sports  placing  the  figure  at  a  gargantu- 
200  million). 

(o  matter  what  happens,  Wild  Wild 
r  will  be  the  ultimate  test  of  Smith's 
ribution  to  the  field  of  semiotics,  the 
iber-One  Answer.  Typically,  he  credits 
tienfeld  with  fleshing  this  out;  typically, 
nenfeld  says  he's  never  heard  of  the 
iber-One  Answer. 

l  any  case,  the  theory  is  grounded  in 
t  Smith  and  his  friend  the  comic 
me  Martin  call  the  Comedy  Math. 
ere's  a  numerology  that  works  into  be- 
funny,"  Smith  says.  "And  the  numbers 
different.  For  example,  black  people 
very  real,  very  raw  comedy.  Black 
pie  like  to  find  comedy  in  what  is. 
ite  people  like  to  find  comedy  in  what 


should  be  or  could  be  or  would  be." 
Meaning?  "Meaning  white  people  look 
more  to  escape  reality  in  comedy.  And  I 
think  a  lot  of  it  has  to  do  with  people  of 
oppression.  Because  Jews  really  appreciate 
raw,  real  comedy." 

Add  to  this  formula  one  statistical  vari- 
able, the  "pre-laugh,"  which  can  be  defined 
as  the  conditioned  mirth  reflex  prompted 
by  certain  rare  comedians  such  as  Eddie 
Murphy,  Jim  Carrey,  Bill  Murray,  Chris 
Rock,  and  Will  Smith.  "The  audience  is  al- 


LONE  STAR 

Actor  Eddie  Murphy  told  Smith, 

"The  more  you  win,  the  more  they're 

going  to  want  you  to  lose,"  and 

Smith  now  says,  "I'm  starting  to  feel  those 

rumblings That's  scary." 


ready  smiling  in  anticipation  before  they 
even  know  where  the  line  is  going,"  ex- 
plains Sonnenfeld.  Therefore,  "a  little  joke 
becomes  a  bigger  joke,  and  a  big  joke  be- 
comes a  huge  joke." 

The  Number-One  Answer,  in  other 
words,  is  that  elusive  nexus  at  which  black 
comedy  meets  white  comedy.  Or,  translated 
into  an  equation:  Will  Finds  It  Funny  + 
Barry  Finds  It  Funny  +  Pre-laugh  Variable 
=  Universal  Merriment. 

6"\7"ou  can't  always  find  it,  but  you  know 
A  when  you  hit  it,"  says  Smith,  who  ev- 
idently finds  nothing  unusual  about  the  in- 
tellectualization  of  jokes.  He  is  wide-eyed, 
his  hand  running  across  an  imaginary  scale 
of  comedy.  "The  peak  of  the  Number-One 


Answer  is  in  the  center.  But  just  to  the  left 
of  the  Number-One  Answer,  you're  falling 
off,  and  just  to  the  right  of  the  Number- 
One  Answer,  you're  falling  off.  So  you've 
got  to  go  all  the  way  one  way  or  go  all  the 
way  the  other  way  in  searching  for  the 
Number-One  Answer.  That  peak  is  higher 
than  the  two  ends." 

If  you  apply  this  calculus,  the  best  joke 
must  by  definition  be  the  most  mainstream. 
"It's  not  softening  the  edges,"  Smith  cau- 
tions. "It's  sharpening  the  point The 

Number-One  Answer  is 
better  than  the  raw  joke, 
and  it's  better  than  the  soft 
joke.  It  doesn't  compro- 
mise either  strength. . . . 
It's  the  home  run." 

The  mainstream  has 
been  so  good  to  Will 
Smith  that  he  makes  more 
money  in  a  few  months 
than  his  father  made  in  his 
entire  life.  His  per-picture 
asking  price  is  approach- 
ing $20  million,  and  he's 
earned  millions  more 
through  TV  syndication 
and  music,  the  latter  being 
a  periodic  topic  of  scruti- 
ny within  the  so-called  rap 
community,  whose  hard- 
core loyalists  have  occa- 
sionally accused  Smith  of, 
in  essence,  selling  out  to 
whitey.  The  situation  is 
made  more  bizarre  by  the 
fact  that  one  of  Pinkett- 
Smith's  childhood  friends 
was  rapper  Tupac  Shakur, 
the  brilliant  self-styled  "thug"  who  was  mur- 
dered in  1996.  Smith  liked  Shakur,  whom  he 
describes  as  "a  prophet  that  never  had  the 
opportunity  to  blossom,"  but  if  his  Number- 
One  Answer  could  be  applied  to  music,  they 
were  on  opposite  ends  of  the  scale. 

Still,  it  is  without  a  whiff  of  righteousness 
that  Smith  reveals  the  existence  of  a  video- 
booth  tape  that  Pinkett-Smith  and  Shakur 
shot  years  ago  at  a  Virginia  amusement 
park— a  document  for  the  ages,  on  which  the 
two  15-year-olds  break  out  into  a  version  of 
Smith's  singularly  un-hard-core  anthem  "Par- 
ents Just  Don't  Understand."  "He  never 
wanted  that  tape  to  be  out,"  recalls  Smith, 
who  notes  that  Shakur  desperately  wanted  to 
uphold  his  tough-guy  image.  "It's  tougher 
when  you  know  the  person  and  you  can 
kind  of  see  the  road  for  them,  and  they 
didn't  see  it  or  didn't  want  to  see  it." 

Smith's  friend  Keenen  Ivory  Wayans  is 
mystified  that  the  mainstream  is  even  an  is- 
sue. "It  would  be  one  thing  if  he  were  selling 
out  who  he  was  to  be  a  mainstream  suc- 
cess," he  says.  "But  if  you  have  a  quality 


VANITY     FAIR 


WillSmit! 


i    atti  ictive  to  a  large  audi- 
.■,  i  ing  with  that?   I  line's  only 
who  have  that  , . . 
that  we  had  that  kind  of  appeal " 
Smith  is  seated  in  the  middle  of  his 
i  lin  .ill  music  studio,  located  in  the 
back  of  Ins  house.  He  is  wearing  a  powder- 
blue  Pubu  football  jersey;  a  Roget's  The- 
saurus sits  oil  the  mixing  board.  He  spends 
the  next  several  minutes  searching  for  a 
tape  oi'  his  latest  song,  but  he  can't  find  it. 
This  annoys  him,  since  he  loves  the  song 
and  thinks  it's  a  fine  example  of  keeping  it 
real.  Will  Smith-style.  Not  that  he's  out  to 
prove  anything.  "Once  I  got  beyond   11 
million  albums,"  says  Smith,  who  finds  it 
hilarious  when  white  kids  use  the  word 
"jiggy."  "I  was  cool  with  it." 
Then  he  just  laughs  and  laughs. 

Smith  can  do  this  sort  of  thing.  He  can  say 
that  he's  so  rich  that  he  doesn't  even 
think  about  money,  and  for  some  reason  you 
want  to  high-five  him.  He  can  launch  into 
one  of  his  pet  conspiracy  theories— he  is  a 
card-carrying  conspiracy  theorist— and  the 
next  thing  you  know,  you  can't  sleep  until 
you  resolve  the  whole  Grassy  Knoll  thing. 
He  believes,  despite  evidence  to  the  contrary, 
that  "possibly  aids  was  created  as  a  result 
of  biological-warfare  testing."  But  when  he 
makes  his  case,  his  reasoning  sounds  so 
damn  reasonable  that,  hey,  you  never  know. 
"Why  do  we  think  it  is  so  incredibly  lu- 
dicrous that  there  are  conspiracies  that  take 
place  within  our  government?"  he  asks  rhe- 
torically. "President  Clinton  apologized  for 
one."  He's  referring  to  the  1932-72  Tuske- 
gee  Study,  in  which  black  soldiers  infected 


with  syphilis  were  left  untreated  lor  experi- 
mental reasons.  Tin  not  gonna  go  out  on 
a  limb  and  say  I  believe  any  of  them,"  he 
says  of  the  theories.  "I  believe  that  the  pos- 
sibility exists" 

The  guy  is  so  charismatic  that  after  a 
while  you  actually  find  yourself  seeking 
his  spiritual  guidance.  Girlfriend  trouble? 
Ask  Will.  "Complete  submission,"  he  sug- 
gests. "The  way  that  Jada  and  I  apply  that 
to  our  relationship  is:  we  sacrifice  ourselves 
completely  for  the  other  person.  I'll  come 
home  from  work  and  give  her  a  massage. 
She  knows  I've  worked  all  day,  and  the  next 
day  she  wants  so  bad  to  do  something  for 
me.  And  vice  versa.  Complete  submission." 

Career  got  you  down?  Will's  your  man. 
"Winners  actually  do  different  things  than 
losers  do,"  he  explains.  "We're  all  pretty 
damned  even  coming  out  of  the  womb.  I 
mean,  there  are  certain  people  that  just 
have  certain  gifts.  There's  an  8  percent,  7 
percent  margin  of  error.  So  if  we  all  were 
committed  and  wanted  to  work  the  way 
that  Michael  Jordan  works— if  it's  about 
time  put  in— then  we  can  get  pretty  damn 
close.  And  it's  just  the  mind— you've  got  to 
believe  that  you  can  actually  do  it." 

"A  good  friend  of  mine  is  a  crew  mem- 
ber, and  he's  sort  of  having  some  personal 
problems  and  trying  to  decide  what  to  do 
with  his  life,"  Sonnenfeld  recalls,  "and  I 
said,  'Go  talk  to  Will.'  . . .  After  10  min- 
utes you  feel  like  you're  such  a  selfish,  stu- 
pid moron  for  not  realizing  that  you're  the 
luckiest  person  on  the  planet." 

"I  call  that  the  Bank  of  Karma,"  Smith 
says,  laughing.  "Got  some  good  Karma 
goin'.  Because,  I  mean,  something's  going  to 
happen.  I'm  going  to  get  caught  with  some 
hookers  in  Vegas,  you  know?"  In  fact, 


Smith  already  detects  the  distinct  scent 
backlash  in  the  air- virgin  territory  for  hi  p 
"I  in  starting  to  feel  those  rumblings," 
says.  "That's  scary,  and  I'm  hoping  thai 
doesn't  grow  beyond  this.  Eddie  Murp 
said  to  me,  The  more  you  win,  the  m(  jtf 
they're  going  to  want  you  to  lose.'" 


I  ■ 


Not  that  he  cares  terribly— about  t  |M> 
backlash,  about  his  few  critics,  ab<  t 
playing  second  fiddle  to  Chris  O'Donn  P 
"I'm  supposed  to  be  the  No.  2  guy,"  he  sa 
Karmicly  speaking.  "Tom  Cruise's  movl^ 
are  supposed  to  be  bigger  than  mine."  If  tl 
happens,  he  says,  "then  the  world  is  in 
der.  I  love  being  black  in  America  ai  i- 
specifically,  being  black  in  Hollywood 
all  gravy.  Every  single  thing  that  I  accofsx 
plish.  It's  gravy.  It's  like  I've  already  won.' 

For  the  record,  Smith  virtually  ne 
loses  his  signature  Will  Smithness.  In  fa 
it's  happened  only  once  in  recent  memo  ll 
and  here  it  is:  He  is  driving  down  the  fr  m 
way  in  Los  Angeles,  listening  to  talk  rad  p 
A  female  caller  is  railing  against  the  infi  p 
of  illegal  aliens  from  Mexico.  Smith  gets 
irate  that  he  calls  the  station  and,  usin^Kk 
talk-radio  pseudonym  of  Mark  Jenkins, 
gins  to  spew.  "The  town  that  we  live  i 
Los  Angeles!"  he  cries.  "You  know  will 
Because  we  live  in  Mexico!  They're  comi 
home!  That  last  lady  that  called  in 
probably  on  La  Cienega  Boulevard!" 

"Yeah,  I  got  angry,"  Smith  says  proudjh"; 
"But  that's  a  different  kind  of  angry." 

So,  he  is  asked,  when  was  the  last  til  k 
you  really  got  angry-angryl  "Um,"  he  sa  ■ 
a  bit  embarrassed.  He  thinks  hard.  "1  k 
know,  that's  tough.  Because  I  do— I  gues  p 
get  upset.  I'm  just  blanking  right  now." 

And  there  it  is— the  one  question  that  V  | 
Smith  will  never,  ever  be  able  to  answer. 


v 


N 
rlfcur 

bles  through  the  snow,  laughing  maniaca  r  ft 
He  falls  face-first  into  the  snow.  His  motl  ■ 
chases  him,  tears  running  down  her  chee  h 
Another  mother  sits  in  the  snow  with  I 
four  children,  huddled,  shivering. 

When  I  offer  the  old  woman  sittingtfe 
the  car  a  piece  of  bread  she  looks  at  me  l 
does  not  take  it.  Nor  does  she  push  it  aw  I 
She  seems  dead  already. 

Kula  Pass,  on  the  Montenegrin- 

Kosovan  Border, 

March  31,  1999 

Sometimes  there  is  an  arrogance  to  t  it- 
profession.  When  reporters  become  a  fe 
less,  we  tend  to  think  of  ourselves  as  in  I 
structible.  Because  we  are  outside  the  c<|w 
flict,  observing,  it  is  easy  to  forget  that 
are  not  protected  by  some  higher  power. 
Sometimes  you  get  strange  vibes  and  )  I 


Kosovo 


continued  from  page  86  is  he?  Where  is 
he?"  she  asks,  wringing  her  bare  hands,  ex- 
amining every  face  that  goes  by.  She  is  crying; 
she  says  she  has  been  standing  at  the  crossing 
point  for  four  hours  and  he  has  not  come  in 
with  the  column  of  people.  "I  must  find  him. 
My  brother.  They  may  have  taken  him.  They 
were  taking  away  some  of  the  men,  and  he 
is  young.  Please  tell  me,  where  is  he?" 

We  drive  down  the  road  to  look  for  him. 
Hundreds  of  people  pass,  in  groups  of  five 
and  six.  A  woman  walks  by  pushing  a 
pram  with  a  baby  inside,  surrounded  by 
three  small  children  clutching  hands.  A 
man  rides  a  bicycle  in  the  snow,  falling  over 
every  few  minutes;  stoically,  he  keeps  pick- 
ing the  bike  up  and  continuing  on.  Anna's 
brother  appears.  He  is  a  teenager,  pale- 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


skinned,  with  dark  hair.  He  is  wearing  a 
jean  jacket  and  has  a  teary  look.  Anna 
leaps  into  his  arms,  hugging  and  kissing 
him.  Then  she  begins  to  kiss  and  hug  me. 

Some  people  walk  alone.  "A  lot  of  people 
are  crossing,  but  a  lot  of  people  are  dead!"  a 
woman  screams  at  me  later.  She  is  a  teacher, 
from  Pec,  and  she  is  hysterical,  weeping: 

"They  are  dead!  Hospitals  are  burning! 
They  are  killing  teachers,  doctors,  anything 
alive.  They  are  animals.  No— animals  do  not 
treat  one  another  like  this." 

Others  are  silent.  That  horrible  stillness 
in  the  snow.  An  old  woman,  heavyset,  wear- 
ing a  scarf,  stares  straight  ahead  in  deep 
shock,  plodding  up  and  up  the  mountain 
toward  Montenegro.  My  colleague,  a  British 
journalist,  puts  her  in  his  car  and  we  drive 
her  to  the  top  of  the  pass.  She  stays  in  the 
heated  vehicle  and  does  not  say  a  word,  for 
hours.  A  child  with  Down's  syndrome  stum- 


to  trust  your  instincts.  Sometimes,  if 
gnore  these  instincts,  you  get  into  trou- 
Earlier  this  day,  a  photographer  said 
tie  had  seen  drunk  Serb  soldiers  at  the 
ing  point.  Soldiers  aren't  supposed  to 
andering  over  the  border,  inflaming  an 
dy  tense  situation.  Montenegro  has 
in  a  state  of  jittery  panic  all  week  be- 
;  Milosevic  replaced  the  local  army 
nander.  There  have  been  rumors  of  an 
-led  coup  against  the  pro-West  govern- 
.  (Montenegro  is  still  part  of  the  Serb- 
nated  Yugoslav  federation  even  though 
are  strong  leanings  among  many  Mon- 
rins  to  pull  away.) 

iter  in  the  day,  while  using  my  col- 
es' satellite  phone  on  top  of  the  border 
itain  pass,  I  look  up  and  see  for  myself 
or  five  Serb  soldiers:  aggressive,  unsmil- 
.vearing  dark  glasses  on  a  cloudy,  gray 
rhey  should  not  be  on  this  pass.  It  is  a 
al,  menacing  sight.  But  I  need  to  stay 
mtinue  reporting,  and,  while  the  other 
lalists  leave  the  mountain,  I  sit  in  an  ar- 
;d  car  belonging  to  two  French  televi- 
journalists,  trying  to  keep  warm, 
ne  hour  later.  This  time,  the  Serb  soldiers 
m  through  the  snow  very  quickly.  What 
x  next  chills  me.  It  is  a  man  screaming: 
I  When  I  look  out  the  window,  I  see 
of  the  French  journalists,  half  lying  in 
,now.  He  has  been  pushed  down.  His 
are  above  his  head,  in  an  instinctive 
f  surrender.  A  Serb  soldier  has  a  kalash- 
/  cocked  and  aimed  at  his  head, 
lere  are  about  10  of  them,  Serb  soldiers 
have  come  over  the  border  from  Kosovo, 
drag  the  Frenchman  out  of  the  snow 
?egin  hitting  him,  kicking  him.  I  am  too 
led  to  feel  frightened.  It  is  the  first  time 
ven  years  covering  the  Balkan  war  that  I 
seen  Serbs  actually  strike  a  journalist, 
they  are  beating  him  up,  I  think,  this  is 
|ood.  In  my  encounters  with  the  Serb 
'  I  have  seen  anger,  stupidity,  arrogance, 
ity.  But  this  is  different.  In  Bosnia,  I  was 
held  for  three  hours,  strip-searched, 
liberated  from  the  £3,000  they  found 
jd  down  my  trousers  ("You  can  get  it 
after  the  war,  in  Belgrade"). 
You  can't  do  this,"  I  had  said  when 
sent  me  walking  into  the  darkness 
out  any  transportation  or  cash. 
We  can  do  anything  we  want,"  one  of 
:ommanders  said,  grinning.  "We're  win- 
the  war." 

Jt  this  time,  this  is  something  else:  these 
men  are  completely  out  of  control.  They 
!  far  more  emotional  and  disturbed— this 
:rsonal.  We  are  no  longer  journalists,  ob- 
;rs.  We  are  part  of  the  NATO  conspiracy. 
You  bombed  Belgrade!  You  bombed 
"  they  scream.  One  sees  me  and  drags 
aut  of  the  car.  They  demand  our  pass- 
s:  two  French,  one  British. 


"Mirage!  Mirage!"  one  screeches,  a  ref- 
erence to  the  French  fighter  jets,  "nato! 
Clinton!" 

I  look  down,  thinking  it  wise  not  to 
make  eye  contact.  One  of  the  journalists 
tries  to  explain  that  we  are  not  responsible 
for  the  actions  of  our  governments.  The 
Serbs  spit  on  the  ground  and  scream.  There 
appears  to  be  no  officer  in  charge,  which 
makes  them  more  crazed.  One,  who  speaks 
Italian  with  me,  vacillates  between  reason 
("We're  going  to  take  you  to  Pristina  and 
arrest  you  for  being  spies")  and  madness 
("You're  going  to  die  like  people  in  Bel- 
grade have  died"). 

They  are  claiming  we  have  wandered  into 
Kosovan  territory.  "We'll  go  now,"  I  say 
weakly.  "We'll  go  back  to  Montenegro." 
(Borders  in  this  part  of  the  world  are  en- 
tirely fluid;  there  are  no  signs  saying,  wel- 
come TO  KOSOVO.  DRIVE  SAFELY.) 

"You're  a  nato  spy!  Now  you're  going  to 
know  what  it  feels  like  to  be  bombed  and 
burned,"  the  Italian-speaker  barks.  He 
shouts  orders  at  a  very  young  soldier.  This 
one  has  pale  red  hair,  wears  a  camouflage 
cowboy  hat,  and  has  wild,  unfocused  eyes. 
He  keeps  pulling  out  his  pistol  and  aiming 
it  at  the  terrified  refugees,  who  continue 
walking  single  file  past  us,  eyes  dropped, 
trying  not  to  be  drawn  into  the  situation. 

The  young  one  turns  to  me.  "You  we  ar- 
rest," he  says,  pointing  to  me  and  clasping 
my  wrists  together  as  if  they  were  hand- 
cuffed. "Because  you  have  Italian  blood.  But 
the  French,  we  kill."  When  they  search  the 
car,  they  find  a  photograph  of  one  of  the 
French  in  Bosnia  with  the  U.N.  The  photo 
was  taken  on  a  rainy  day  and  he  had  bor- 
rowed a  soldier's  jacket  to  protect  his  camera. 

"nato  spies!  Spies!"  the  young  soldier 
yells.  He  appears  delighted  that  they  have 
hard  proof  with  which  to  abuse  us. 

Later,  looking  back,  I  will  realize  they 
don't  have  a  plan,  that  they  have  no  idea 
what  to  do  with  us.  They  take  all  our  gear- 
cameras,  sat  phone,  mobile  phones,  armored 
car,  passports,  other  documents— and  tell  us 
to  turn  our  backs  to  them  and  march  down 
the  mountain  and  into  Montenegro.  I  don't 
want  to  turn  my  back.  They  fire  over  our 
heads.  We  run,  jump  into  the  back  of  a 
truck  carrying  refugees.  A  Serb-army  jeep, 
coming  up  the  mountain,  blocks  our  truck. 
These  soldiers  tell  us  to  get  out;  we  are 
marched  back  up  to  where  we  started. 

This  time,  they  make  us  sit  in  the  French 
journalists'  car.  We  hear  shots— not  fired  in 
the  air.  When  I  turn  around,  I  see  they  have 
lined  up  refugees.  They  are  stealing  their 
cars  and  rifling  through  their  bags.  One  of 
the  French  says  to  me,  "Don't  turn  around." 
I  see  one  Kosovar  boy  who  earlier  was  ferry- 
ing refugees  up  and  over  the  mountain  in  a 
flatbed  truck.  The  soldiers  are  beating  him 
and  hitting  him  with  their  guns;  he  makes 


noises  like  a  whimpering  dog.  He  falls  to 
the  ground  like  an  empty  sack. 

Another  shot.  Into  something.  I  do  not 
look  back  this  time,  out  of  cowardice  and 
fear.  The  three  of  us  sit  stunned,  waiting. 
Then  the  soldiers  decide  to  take  us  to  Pris- 
tina, in  Kosovo. 

"Follow  us,"  says  the  Italian-speaker. 
"Drive  slowly.  Stay  behind  us.  Now  you 
will  see  what  it  is  like  to  get  bombed.  Our 
commander  will  decide  what  to  do.  Prison, 
for  a  long  time."  He  clasps  his  wrists  to- 
gether to  indicate  chains,  and  laughs. 

We  drive  through  the  snow,  down  the 
other  side  of  the  mountain,  passing  hun- 
dreds of  refugees  going  the  opposite  way. 
The  ride  is  silent.  In  my  bag,  I  still  have  a 
mobile  phone  that  does  not  work  and  my 
notebook,  full  of  a  week  of  documentation 
of  refugees:  phone  numbers  of  their  rela- 
tives, testimonies,  first  and  last  names.  I 
have  been  searched  by  Serbs  before.  I  know 
how  they  react  when  they  see  what  is  writ- 
ten about  them.  It  is  not  good  to  have  the 
notebook  with  me— neither  for  me  nor  for 
the  people  I  have  interviewed. 

Very  slowly,  I  rip  up  my  notebook.  My 
colleague  throws  it  out  the  open  door,  very 
carefully,  watching  to  make  sure  the  soldiers 
ahead  of  us  do  not  see.  It  lands  in  the  snow 
in  the  middle  of  the  road.  It  leaves  a  black 
mark  in  the  whiteness. 

We  drive  about  30  kilometers.  Then, 
somewhere  inside  Kosovo,  the  sol- 
diers get  a  radio  call.  We  see  the  Italian- 
speaker  answering.  Then  he  stops  the  jeep, 
gets  out,  and  fights  a  cigarette.  He  tells  us  to 
get  out  of  our  car.  It  will  soon  be  evening 
and  we  are  now  in  an  isolated  spot,  away 
from  refugees,  away  from  any  witnesses.  We 
are  on  the  side  of  a  freezing  mountain.  No 
one  with  any  power  to  do  anything  about  it 
had  seen  us  taken.  If  we  disappear,  no  one 
will  know.  The  thought  of  rape  has  not 
crossed  my  mind— I  am  more  worried 
about  getting  shot  in  the  back. 

The  soldier  smokes  his  cigarette  thought- 
fully while  we  wait.  Then,  slowly,  he  walks 
to  the  rear  of  the  jeep.  He  stands  outside 
the  door  thinking,  then  hands  back  our 
gear.  "Get  out  of  here,"  he  says,  in  good 
English.  "There  are  Albanian  terrorists  [the 
Serbs'  phrase  for  the  Kosovo  Liberation 
Army]  everywhere.  It's  very  dangerous.  Go 
away.  Never  come  back." 

Then  he  does  the  oddest  thing.  He  kisses 
me  on  both  cheeks.  He  hugs  the  French,  al- 
most as  though  he  is  trying  to  demonstrate 
communion:  that  we  are  all  in  a  place 
where  we  do  not  want  to  be.  He  crushes  the 
cigarette  under  his  heel,  jumps  in  the  jeep, 
and  speeds  off  toward  Pec. 

We  drive  back  into  Montenegro.  When  we 
get  to  Rozaj.  we  hear  that  the  Serbs  on  the 
Macedonian  border— on  the  other  side  of 


VANITY     FAIR 


l\o: 


i 


ii.ui  taken  three 

hostage  around  the  same 

oldiers  got  us  A  male 

IS  I  set  up  the  sal 

back  oi  tin  armored  car  in 
the  pouring  rain. 

'It's  you,  thank  God,"  be  says,  speaking 
perfeel  I  nglish,  touching  my  shoulder  gently. 
"We  saw  them  march  you  off.  We  saw  them 
lake  you  at  gunpoint.  You  were  very  lucky. 
God  was  with  you  " 

His  name  is  Mustafa,  and  he  says  he  is  a 
professor  at  the  University  of  Pristina.  He 
speaks,  in  addition  to  English,  perfect  French, 
Italian,  and  Danish.  He  has  been  living  with 
his  family  in  Denmark,  and  came  to  visit  his 
sister  in  Pec  when  the  air  strikes  began. 

As  an  intellectual  who  has  frequently  en- 
tertained Western  journalists  in  his  home,  he 
says  that  he  was  targeted  by  the  death 
squads,  the  Serb  paramilitary.  He  says  he 
was  worried  about  Arkan— the  indicted  Serb 
war  criminal  (real  name:  Zeljko  Raznatovic) 
who,  along  with  his  paramilitary  squad,  the 
notorious  Tigers,  has  been  accused  of  some 
of  the  worst  atrocities  during  the  Bosnian 
war.  It  is  rumored  that  Arkan  and  his  men 
have  gone  down  to  Kosovo  to  help  their 
Serb  brothers— a  terrifying  thought. 

Mustafa  asks  me  if  I  can  help  get  him 
and  his  wife  and  four  children,  who  are 
sheltered  somewhere  on  the  mountain,  out 
of  Montenegro  as  soon  as  possible. 

"If  Milosevic  marches  into  Montenegro, 
which  everyone  says  he  will  do  soon,"  Mus- 
tafa says  in  a  soft  voice,  "I  will  be  killed.  All 
of  our  lives  hang  on  very  little  here." 

We  sit  and  have  a  coffee  in  a  noisy  bar 
blaring  hip-hop  music.  I  cannot  stop  shak- 
ing, from  cold  and  nerves.  I  say  I  will  phone 
the  Italian  Consulate  in  the  morning. 

"God  was  with  you  today,"  Mustafa  re- 
peats, adding  sugar  to  his  Turkish  coffee. 
His  eyes  have  the  look  of  someone  haunt- 
ed. Like  all  of  the  refugees  on  the  border, 
he  has  seen  too  much  in  the  past  few 
weeks.  "Usually  the  Serbs  just  shoot.  They 
don't  have  a  change  of  heart." 

Mustafa  will  get  out.  He  and  his  family 
will  take  the  ferry  from  Montenegro  to  Italy 
and  fly  to  Denmark.  He  is  now  safe,  and 
will  probably  never  return  to  Kosovo. 

Race,  a  Serb  Stronghold  in 
Montenegro, 

april  4,  1999 
(Easter  Sunday  in  the  West) 


<Q; 


iuite  simply,  Serbia  had  already  lost 
Kosovo— lost  it,  that  is,  in  the  most 
basic  human  and  demographic  terms," 
wrote  the  British  historian  Noel  Malcolm 
last  year  before  the  Serb  offensive  began 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


and  before  the  nato  bombing.  But  he  did 
aoi  foresee,  as  najo  did  not  foresee,  the  die- 
hard feelings  of  the  Serb  people,  solidified 
during  the  bombing  campaign,  and  how  un- 
willing they  are  to  give  up  their  spiritual 
heartland,  their  Jerusalem. 

Kosovo,  to  the  Serbs,  is  more  than  a  po- 
litical stronghold:  it  is  sacred.  Here  are  some 
of  their  greatest  monasteries  and  the  re- 
mains of  their  most  revered  saints.  It  is  also 
the  place  of  their  holy  battlefield,  Kosovo 
Polje,  which  they  had  lost  before,  in  1389, 
to  the  Turks.  The  place  has  taken  on  myth- 
ic proportions.  During  the  Balkan  war  of 
1913,  which  reclaimed  Kosovo  from  the 
Turks,  one  Serb  soldier  wrote: 

The  single  sound  of  that  word— Kosovo- 
caused  an  indescribable  excitement.  This  one 
word  pointed  to  the  black  past— five  cen- 
turies. In  it  exists  the  whole  of  our  sad  past— 
the  tragedy  of  Prince  Lazar  [who  lost  the  bat- 
tle of  Kosovo  Polje]  and  the  entire  Serbian 
people. . . .  Each  of  us  created  for  himself  a 
picture  of  Kosovo  while  we  were  still  in  the 
cradle.  Our  mothers  lulled  us  to  sleep  with 
the  songs  of  Kosovo. 

Kosovo's  fate  was  more  recently  sealed 
when  Milosevic  gave  his  April  1987  speech: 
"Yugoslavia  does  not  exist  without  Kosovo! 
Yugoslavia  would  disintegrate  without  Ko- 
sovo! Yugoslavia  and  Serbia  are  not  going 
to  give  up  Kosovo!"  In  1989,  he  would  revoke 
Kosovo's  autonomy  within  the  Yugoslav 
federation,  fire  Albanians  from  state-run 
institutions,  and  ban  the  teaching  of  the  Al- 
banian language  and  its  literature. 

In  Race,  a  remote,  Serb-dominated  vil- 
lage outside  of  Podgorica,  the  Montenegrin 
capital,  they  support  the  current  push  to 
drive  every  "Turk"  (Albanian,  Muslim,  the 
same  thing  in  their  eyes)  out  of  Kosovo. 
Here,  there  are  no  "servants  of  nato"  and 
no  "traitors."  This  is  a  hard-core,  barren 
place,  a  village  carved  out  of  a  gray  moun- 
tain. This  is  Slobodan  Milosevic  country, 
full  of  simple  people  who  might  not  have 
supported  him  before  but  will  now  go  to 
their  graves  for  a  greater,  united  Serbia. 

On  the  drive  out,  through  the  stony 
mountains,  I  see  graffiti  which  chill  me: 
arkan,  the  indicted  war  criminal.  And  the 
Cyrillic  symbol  for  "Only  unity  can  save 
the  Serbs,"  which  was  often  painted  on 
burned-out  houses  in  Bosnia  and  Kosovo. 

In  a  small  cafe  I  meet  a  farmer  and  his 
wife  and  three  children.  They  sit  under  a 
portrait  of  Slobodan  Milosevic,  the  adults 
drinking  beer.  The  children  eat  sweets  and 
drink  Cokes  and  laugh.  The  farmer,  Raj- 
ko,  is  at  first  hostile,  then  buys  me  a  cof- 
fee and  tries  to  explain  his  position:  his 
family  has  lived  in  these  hills  forever  and 
ever.  He  considers  himself  a  Serb,  not  a 
Montenegrin,  and  he  will  die  fighting  for 
Greater  Serbia  if  the  Montenegrin  separa- 
tists follow  the  pattern  of  the  other  former 


Yugoslav  republics  and  try  to  break  av  poll 

"Someone  is  going  to  stay  in  this  co  ik" 
try,"  he  says.  "And  it  will  be  a  Serb.  T  p& 
can't  shoot  every  single  one  of  us."  He  s  ill 
that  he  does  not  believe  what  is  said  to  \H 
happening  in  Kosovo  to  be  true.  Then  :«t 
no  such  thing  as  ethnic  cleansing  -pec  pool 
are  fleeing  the  NATO  bombs  and  the  '  tyul 
banian  terrorists."  Kosovo  belongs  to  I  m 
bia,  emotionally,  historically,  and  politic;  jdtj 

I  leave  feeling  more  depressed  than  t ! 
any  other  day  of  the  trip.  Not  only    kg 
these  people  living  in  denial,  but  it  is  cl  k  1 
that  the  Kosovo  conflict  is  rapidly  dest  : 
lizing  the  rest  of  the  region.  That  night 
Podgorica,  there  is  a  demonstration  in   s  1 
town  square  by  Milosevic  supporters.  I  t;en 
billed  as  a  peace  effort,  but  the  squar  b 
full  of  people  waving  anti-NATO,  anti-Clin  I 
signs  and  wearing  targets  pinned  to  tl  m 
chests.  Journalists  are  advised  not  to  go  n 
the  anti-Western  feeling  has  been  buildj 
up.  All  day  the  city  has  been  rife  w  ^ 
tension. 

I  wander  through  the  crowd,  listening  - 
the  dreadful  Yugoslav  rock.  An  aging  ro  k 
er  screams,  "Serbia!  Serbia!"  I  listen  i  k 
try  to  blend  in  and  not  look  like  a  jouri 
ist.  Momo,  a  Montenegrin  friend  of  mi 
leads  me  by  the  hand  and  tells  me  not  ,  ;,- 
speak  English. 

I  do  what  he  says.  But  what  I  feel  fr 
that  crowd,  standing  in  the  middle  of  it 
a  naked  antipathy  toward  Westerners  th;  L 
have  not  felt  before,  a  surging  sense  of 
ger,  suspicion,  hatred. 


Podgorica, 
April  7,  1999 


h. 


t'E 

■ 

Hi 

'lit 

It  is  two  days  before  Serb  Good  Fric  L 
the  day  after  the  anniversary  of  the  d  | 
astating  German  air  attack  on  Belgrade 
1941  (when,  ironically,  Serbia  was  aligi 
with  the  Western  powers).  Milosevic  a 
for  a  cease-fire  to  respect  the  upcoming  [», 
thodox  Easter.  It  is  a  joke:  cease-fire  in 
Balkans  means  playing  for  more  time. 

I  meet  an  80-year-old  man  who  can^ 
give  his  name,  a  general  under  Tito,  w 
drove  all  night  from  Belgrade  to  Podgor 
when  he  heard  the  rumors  that  a  cc 
d'etat  was  imminent  here.  "I  am  old,  bi  L 
can  offer  some  advice,"  he  says  earnes 
He  tells  me  old  war  stories:  In  Deceml 
1941,  when  he  was  21,  he  led  a  partisan  I 
talion  of  431  men  in  guerrilla  warfare  agai  |, 
the  Germans  and  the  Italians.  During  < 
battle,  he  remembers  "fighting  from  e< 
morning  to  early  night."  They  ambus! 
Italian  tanks.  They  fought  hand  to  hand 
the  morning,  it  was  his  job  to  count  the 
sualties:  180  wounded,  82  dead.  "And  t 
was  the  saddest  morning  of  my  life." 

But   he  believed  in  something,  so 
fought  to  the  end  of  the  war  and  was  hi 


JULY     19 


I 

i 

I 


corated.  After  the  liberation  of  Bel- 
:,  he  became  a  general  at  26,  and  later 
?ected  diplomat. 

n  those  days,  we  lived  so  close  to 
i  that  you  became  older  and  more 
■  with  double  speed,"  he  tells  me. 
ie  next  day,  I  find  him  drinking  coffee 
outdoor  cafe,  nato  bombs  have  fall- 
1  Montenegro,  hitting  Serb-army  tar- 
Belgrade,  where  his  family  is,  is  in 
;s.  The  Pentagon  has  found  evidence 
ass  graves  in  Kosovo.  More  refugees 
ouring  over  the  border,  bearing  more 
s  of  atrocities.  The  war  nato  thought 
d  be  over  in  a  few  days  appears  to  be 
ng  into  an  abyss. 

le  general  is  distraught.  His  hand  trem- 
is  he  holds  the  coffee 
He  has  lived  through 
;struction  of  his  coun- 
/  German  warplanes, 
the  renaissance  of 
herhood  and  unity" 
.11  Yugoslavs  under 
He  watched  the  war 
jvenia,  Croatia,  Bos- 
sfow,  aged  80,  he  has 
:  to  offer  his  services 
e  Montenegrin  sepa- 
s  who  may  have  to 
against  Milosevic. 
5  frightened  at  what 
witnessing. 
Everything  is  ruined," 
:  saying  in  a  shaky 
:.  "Everything  is  ru- 
There  is  no  more  fra- 
y  and  unity.  The  last 
:ars,  everything  is  ru- 
"  He  pauses  and  puts  down  his  cup.  "I 
;o  many  friends  during  World  War  II, 
iany  young  people  trying  to  create  a 
country.  Now  everything  is  falling  down 
use  of  ideas.  Who  are  these  people? 
they  insane?  Why  are  they  cleaning 
Cosovo?" 

OMEWHERE  INSIDE  SOUTHWESTERN 

Kosovo, 
May  10-12,  1999 

ve  managed  to  cross  the  border  into 
>sovo  with  a  special-forces  K.L.A.  unit, 
ajor  Serb  offensive  is  under  way  to  take 

territory  the  K.L.A.  won  two  weeks 
It  also  happens  to  be  the  night  of  the 
iest  nato  bombing  in  Kosovo  since  the 
paign  began  over  a  month  ago.  I  am 
;  in  a  muddy  ditch  with  a  helmet  that 
no  strap,  getting  bombed  by  Serb 
;s  trying  to  hit  us— and  by  NATO  planes 
g  to  hit  the  nearby  Serb  ground  forces, 
s  and  rockets  fall  intermittently, 
am  with  a  young  soldier,  an  Albanian 

in  Kosovo  who  has  recently  been  liv- 
n  the  U.S.  and  Canada.  Dardan  is  25 


years  old,  handsome,  wearing  a  Polo  Ralph 
Lauren  hat  under  his  helmet.  He  has  also 
lived  in  London,  where  he  was  so  good  at 
mixing  cocktails  that  he  was  voted  the  fifth- 
best  bartender  in  Britain.  He's  proud  of  that 
fact,  and  proud  that  he  paid  for  his  own 
plane  ticket  from  Vancouver  to  arrive  here 
at  this  front  line  to  fight  with  the  K.L.A. 

Dardan  has  never  fired  a  gun  before. 
Now  he's  got  a  Chinese-made  kalashnikov 
to  defend  his  country  against  the  Serb  of- 
fensive, which  has  been  going  on  for  four 
days.  In  the  dark  there  is  chaos:  every  time 
a  plane  roars  through  the  sky  and  drops  a 
bomb  with  a  terrifying  dense  thud,  we  do 
not  know  where  it  is  coming  from. 

"Who's  bombing  us?  Who's  bombing 


LIMBO 

Stranded  in  no-man's-land,  refugees 

await  their  future  in  a  bus  on  the  Kosovan- 

Macedonian  border,  April  3,  1999. 


us?"  one  of  the  younger  soldiers  yells  to  an 
older  soldier.  No  one  knows,  but  someone 
says  that  four  soldiers  who  died  earlier,  hit 
as  they  lay  in  their  tents,  were  victims  of 
NATO.  There  is  confusion  about  how  many 
people  are  dead,  how  many  are  wounded. 
This  is  what  war  is:  confusion,  uncertainty, 
not  knowing  which  direction  the  shooting 
or  the  rocket  fire  is  coming  from. 

For  two  nights,  we  have  slept  in  ditches  on 
muddy  slopes  covered  in  soldiers'  excrement, 
surrounded  by  wounded  soldiers  whose  flesh 
has  been  ripped  away  by  hot  pieces  of  shrap- 
nel. I  have  always  thought  of  myself  as 
squeamish.  But  when  you  are  under  this 
kind  of  intense  fire,  some  things  become  ir- 
relevant. There  are  people  around  me  dying 
on  dirty  stretchers,  and  they  are  young. 

I  once  asked  a  Bosnian  soldier  how  old 
he  was.  "Eighteen,"  he  replied.  Then  he 
added,  quickly,  "Don't  look  at  me  like  that. 
I  know  what  you  are  thinking."  What  I  was 


thinking  was  this:  I  don't  know  if  this  kid  is 
ever  going  to  reach  his  19th  birthday.  And  I 
hated  Slobodan  Milosevic  for  making  him 
fight  this  war  when  he  should  be  at  parties 
or  sitting  in  a  cafe  looking  at  girls.  One  of 
his  comrades  showed  me  a  helmet  with  a 
picture  of  a  model  from  Victoria's  Secret 
taped  inside.  "If  I  ever  get  out,"  he  said, 
"my  girlfriend  is  going  to  look  like  this." 

Lying  in  the  ditch,  Dardan  and  I  are 
talking  to  each  other  as  if  we  were  meeting 
for  the  first  time  at  a  cocktail  party. 

"I  left  Pristina  in  1992,"  he  says.  "My 
whole  generation  left.  We  didn't  want  to 
get  drafted  by  the  Serbs  and  fight  against 
the  Bosnians.  But  I  came  back  to  fight  for 
my  country.  To  fight  for  freedom.  To  be  an 
Albanian  inside  Kosovo 
is  no  life  at  all.  That's  why 
we're  here— liberation." 
His  voice  is  drowned  out: 
heavy  machine-gun  fire. 
The  Serbs  are  attempt- 
ing to  encircle  our  camp. 
There  are  eight  soldiers  at 
the  end  of  our  ditch  who 
are  meant  to  guard  us 
from  an  infantry  assault. 
"Split  up!  Split  up! 
Fifty  meters  apart!  Move 
down  the  canyon!"  shouts 
one  commander,  who  has 
taken  control.  Though  my 
night  vision  is  poor,  I 
grab  my  pack,  my  hel- 
met—which will  do  me 
little  good  if  I  get  hit  by 
a  grenade— and  run.  I 
have  no  flak  jacket;  nei- 
ther do  the  soldiers  around  me. 

"Split  up— if  one  of  you  gets  hit,  all  of 
you  won't  die!  I  need  all  of  you  alive!"  the 
commander  barks.  A  young  soldier  is  cry- 
ing. Another  soldier,  his  body  and  face 
torn  up  by  shrapnel,  is  squatting  in  the 
mud  motioning  me  to  bring  him  water.  He 
is  weeping  with  fear  and  pain.  He  is  shit- 
ting himself.  I  wipe  his  forehead,  and  then 
throw  myself  back  on  the  ground  as  anoth- 
er rocket  lands.  I  am  facedown  in  the 
mud.  Then  I  run  down  a  ravine,  stumbling 
on  rocks  until  I  find  a  tree.  I  sit  against  it, 
leaning  uphill. 

The  battle  continues  as  day  breaks.  Dur- 
ing a  lull  in  the  fighting  I  wander  over 
some  hills  and  find  the  wreckage  of  a  Serb 
plane  that  has  (allegedly)  been  shot  down 
by  NATO.  Near  the  river  bordering  our  camp 
I  find  the  tents  of  the  four  soldiers  who 
were  supposedly  hit  by  friendly  fire.  It  may 
also  have  been  the  Serbs,  no  one  really 
knows.  Three  were  young  soldiers,  one  was 
an  older  man  with  a  beard.  I  see  one  of  the 
bodies  being  taken  away,  in  a  military  jeep, 
to  a  morgue  in  a  nearby  town. 

I  see  a  cow  with  its  hind  legs  blown  off. 


VANITY     FA 


<  >\  < ) 


white  horse,  star" 
imbs   apparent])  dead  of  a 

I  in  "!■  the  side  of  the  hill 
i  i  look  Hi'  the  craters  of 
mortal  fire  and  bombs,  In  the  middle  of  it 
.ill  is  a  small,  while,  id>lhc  farmhouse  un- 
touched Someone  has  left  washing  outside, 
hanging  on  the  clothesline. 

1  make  mj  was  to  the  front,  The  soldiers 
here,  dug  into  their  trenches  and  foxholes, 
are  tired  but  strong,  and  I  feel  oddly  confi- 
dent of  their  ability,  even  though  we  are 
pinned  down  by  a  15-minute  rirefight.  In  an 
abandoned  stable  serving  as  a  bunker,  I 
stumble  onto  a  unit  of  soldiers  pumped  up 
by  a  recent  victory.  They  are  high-fiving  and 
hugging  one  another.  I  am  told  the  K.L.A. 
has  managed  to  take  out  two  Serb  tanks 
and  kill  60  Serb  soldiers.  In  a  David-versus- 
Goliath  war,  that  is  a  major  victory. 

That  night,  during  another  pause  in  the 
fighting,  we  eat  bean  soup  and  bread  for 
dinner.  The  tents  are  eerily  quiet.  The 
mood  is  different  than  it  was  before  last 
night's  bombardment  began,  when  the  sol- 
diers were  singing  K.L.A.  songs.  Tonight 
we  sit  up  in  our  sleeping  bags,  tension 
growing.  One  of  the  commanders  tells  me 
to  prepare  for  a  horrible  night. 

Someone  lays  out  the  plan:  when  the 
bombing  begins,  we  are  to  run  out  into  a 
ditch  because  the  Serbs  will  certainly  be  tar- 
geting our  tents  and  can  pick  up  body  heat 
with  infra-red  lasers.  We  are  to  run  in  the 
darkness,  one  by  one,  and  be  prepared  for 
aerial,  artillery,  and  possibly  even  infantry  at- 
tacks. "Be  prepared  for  everything,"  one  of 
the  commanders  tells  me.  My  fear  is  an  in- 
fantry attack:  what  will  the  Serbs  do  if  they 
find  me  inside  the  camp? 

As  the  night  and  the  wait  drag  on,  one 
senior  commander,  whom  I  know  from  the 
war  in  Bosnia,  is  sketching  plans  for  an  of- 
fensive. A  soldier,  a  devout  Muslim,  is  pray- 
ing. Another,  a  Swede,  a  former  U.N. 
soldier  in  Bosnia  who  has  come  to  Kosovo 
as  a  K.L.A.  volunteer,  is  cursing  silently  as 
he  tries  to  fit  his  boots— which  he  will  need 
instantly  once  the  bombardment  begins— in- 
side his  sleeping  bag.  One  of  the  young  sol- 
diers is  snoring  gently.  I  can  smell  the 
breath  of  the  man  lying  next  to  me.  At 
around  one  A.M.  I  drift  off,  forgetting  mo- 
mentarily where  I  am. 

We  are  all  awakened  at  three  by  the 
whine  and  crash  of  a  bomb  dropped  by  a 
Serb  plane.  I  too  am  sleeping  with  my 
boots  on,  and  I  fumble  to  sit  upright  and 
get  out  of  my  sleeping  bag. 

"Journalist!  Where  are  you?"  calls  out 
the  Swedish  soldier.  "Ten  seconds  and  exit!" 

"No  lights!  No  matches!"  someone 
screams. 


I    push   the  tent   Bap  aside  and   plunge 

into  darkness,  sliding  down  a  hill  on  my 
back,  unable  to  gel  my  footing, 

From  three  to  six  a.m.,  lying  in  a  muddy 
trench,  I  watch  the  sky  lighten,  the  stars 
I usi  marginally  brighter  than  the  illumina- 
tion of  the  bombs.  At  dawn,  some  of  the 
soldiers  build  a  small  fire.  I  drift  in  and  out 
of  a  painful  sleep  on  the  muddy  slope,  cov- 
ered by  a  blanket  that  one  of  the  comman- 
ders has  placed  protectively  over  me.  As  if 
in  a  dream,  I  see  an  old  village  woman  tak- 
ing her  sheep  up  to  pasture  in  the  middle 
of  the  bombardment.  She  is  completely  un- 
fazed.  I  watch  her  with  a  mixture  of  horror 
and  fascination. 

Around  seven  a.m.,  I  wake  for  good, 
thanks  to  the  thud  of  a  shell  landing  nearby. 
I  see  Dardan,  the  young  bartender,  looking 
out  into  the  sky,  which  is  bright  blue  flecked 
with  pink  and  orange— a  Turner  painting.  It 
is  perfectly,  painfully  beautiful. 

Dardan  is  smoking  a  cigarette.  I  can  see 
only  his  silhouette.  He  looks  like  a  soldier 
from  World  War  II  with  his  old  helmet  and 
his  kalashnikov  slung  over  his  shoulder.  He 
is  staring  at  the  sky  in  amazement,  his 
mind  far  away  from  this  place,  this  time, 
this  war.  He  is  shouting,  to  no  one  in  par- 
ticular, "Look!  Look  at  that  beautiful  light! 
Look  at  that  light!" 

Then  he  sees  that  I  am  awake  and  he 
turns  to  me:  "Janine!  Look  at  that  sky! 
We're  still  alive!  Isn't  it  wonderful— we're 
still  alive!" 

Kuk.es,  Northern  Albania, 
May  14,  1999 

Yesterday  I  left  the  K.L.A.  and  crossed 
over  into  Albania.  The  heavy  bombard- 
ment by  Serb  forces  is  continuing.  I  hear 
the  K.L.A.  is  getting  shelled  by  rockets, 
mortars,  and  tanks.  I  hear  that  there  have 
been  many  K.L.A.  casualties.  I  keep  think- 
ing of  Dardan.  I  don't  know  whether  he's 
dead  or  alive. 

Eighty-four  years  ago,  the  American  re- 
porter John  Reed,  author  of  the  famous  ac- 
count of  the  Russian  Revolution,  Ten  Days 
That  Shook  the  World,  traveled  throughout 
war-torn  Eastern  Europe.  Reading  his  Bal- 
kan reports,  one  has  an  awful  sense  of  his- 
tory endlessly  repeating  itself;  no  one  here 
has  learned  from  past  mistakes.  What  Reed 
wrote  then  could  easily  be  lifted  from  any 
newspaper  today:  "In  the  Serbian  schools 
the  children  are  taught  not  only  the  geogra- 
phy of  old  Serbia,  but  of  all  the  Serbian 
lands,  in  the  order  of  their  redemption— first 
Macedonia,  then  Dalmatia,  Bosnia,  Herze- 
govina, Croatia. . . .  Now  Kosovo  is  avenged 
and  Macedonia  delivered." 

In  the  Balkans,  one  is  always  aware  of 
that  weight  of  history.  "We  are  in  a  time 
vacuum  here,"  the  Sarajevo  poet  Mario 


Susko  once  told  me.  "We  are  trapped  i  P 
terrible  cycle  of  everything  happening  ag 
and  again,  and  we  cannot  stop  it." 

Before  crossing  into  Kosovo  I  had  vi  s 
ed  Cetinje,  the  capital  of  old  Montenej  I" 
where  I  (bund  the  onetime  summer  pal.  >': 
of  the  Petrovic  family,  the  last  Monte  0 
grin  dynasty.  Montenegro  was  recogni;  V' 
as  a  kingdom  in  1878  at  the  Congress  s«J; 
Berlin.  In  1918,  in  the  aftermath  of  Wc  W 
War  I  -which  had  started  with  an  assa 
nation  in  1914  in  Sarajevo— the  kingd  it: 
of  Montenegro  ceased  to  exist  with    : 
single  stroke  of  a  pen.  It  was  annexed  ? 
Serbia,  swallowed  up  into  Yugoslavia.  1  " 
Petrovic  dynasty,  which  had  ruled  for  \   B 
years,  crumpled.  King  Nikola  fled  to  It  w 
and  died  in  exile. 

In  his  old  summer  palace,  I  felt  a  se  ~~ 
of  tragedy  and  irrevocable  sadness.  A  lc 
historian  let  me  in  and  opened  up 
shutters,  flooding  the  dusty  place  v>  ^ 
weak  sunlight.  I  saw  King  Nikola's  boc  r 
his  Turkish  weapons,  a  medal  given  to  \  n 

by  Queen  Victoria.  I  saw  ancient  ser.  i 

print  photographs,  and  his  wife's  silk-a  B 
lace  dresses,  and  the  polished  Chippenc  m 
dining-room  table.  I  saw  the  ghostly  pii  ■ 
imported  from  Leipzig.  No  one  visits  h  ifa 
anymore. 

"We  do  not  have  a  romantic  histoi  p 
said  the  man  who  gloomily  guided  U 
through  the  rooms.  "We  have  a  tragic  o  m 
We  have  no  freedom  to  choose  our  o  li 
destiny." 

"Destiny"  is  a  word  that  is  used  of  m 
here.  There  is  a  sense  that  it  is  history  t  nam 
controls  the  Balkans  and  not  the  other  \  k 
around.  But  the  late  British  writer  Rebei  ■ 
West  would  have  argued  that  point.  AJ  m 
traveling  throughout  Yugoslavia  on  the  I 
of  World  War  II,  she  concluded  that  w  fa 
was  done  in  Yugoslavia  was  always  can  kt 
out  with  a  fatal  plan.  "Why  did  the  Yu  iPii 
slavs  choose  to  perish?  It  must  be  reitera  edits 
that  it  was  their  choice,  made  out  of  :  on- 
knowledge,"  she  wrote.  "On  none  of  th  I 
did  their  fate  steal  unawares." 

When  I  look  at  a  map  of  the  old     i 
goslavia  now,  what  I  see  are  not  bord  M 
but  people  I  knew  and  loved,  or  peopl  th 
met  for  only  a  day  or  an  hour.  During    \ 
1991-95  wars  in  the  former  Yugoslav  im 
more  than  2  million  people  out  of  a  j  I 
war  population  of  24  million  were  c  m 
placed;  in  Kosovo  now,  another  800,C  Die 
and  counting  have  fled.  I  think  of  tr  ■ 
empty  houses,  of  the  things  they  left    - 
hind,  or  else  of  the  people  who  are  hoi  ■ 
less,  mutilated,  dead.  The  dentist  living    | 
derground  in  central  Bosnia,  to  whon  k 
once  gave  a  packet  of  aspirin,  causing    M 
to  burst  into  tears.  A  young  mother  walk  ■ 
up  a  mountain  path  in  Kosovo,  or  i  > 
teenage  champion  swimmer  who  los  tt 
breast  during  a  mortar  attack  in  Sarajevi  ft 


VANITY     FAIR 


JULY      191' 


Nedzarici,  Serb-Held  Sarajevo, 
December  17,  1992 

lis  is  my  strongest  and  most  terri- 
>le  memory:  A  road  gutted  with  shell 
;.  Temperature:  15  degrees  below  zero, 
ursing  home,  ironically  called  the 
;er  for  the  Protection  of  Old  People 
situated  between  two  front  lines.  A 
sniper  situated  in  a  house  25  meters 

;n  old  people  dead  in  three  days, 
n  to  death  in  their  beds,  and  no  one  to 
>ve  the  bodies.  Most  of  the  staff  ran 
when  the  heavy  shelling  began.  The 
can't  decamp  because  of  the  heavy 
ing.  A  78-year-old  man  went  outside  to 


chop  firewood  to  try  to  keep  the  place 
warm  and  got  shot  between  the  eyes. 

I  step  over  broken  glass,  broken  bricks, 
seared  blankets.  It  is  so  cold  my  breath 
comes  out  in  puffs.  The  windows  are  all 
shot  out,  replaced  by  U.N.-supplied  plastic. 

A  long,  frozen  hallway.  Corpses  wrapped 
in  dirty  blankets.  Empty  rooms.  I  open  one 
door  and  count  six  dead  bodies,  still  in 
their  beds,  not  yet  wrapped  and  laid  on  the 
floor.  Faces  frozen  in  their  last  expression. 
They  die  at  night,  the  coldest  time,  alone. 

The  farthest  bed  is  occupied  by  a  pile  of 
rags.  I  bend  over,  and  a  tiny  arm,  no  bigger 
than  a  child's,  reaches  up.  A  tiny  hand 
grabs  my  arm.  It  is  not  a  pile  of  clothes, 
but  an  ancient  woman,  still  alive,  with 


lavender-colored  eyes  and  broken  teeth. 
Her  skin  is  translucent  with  the  cold. 

"Zima,"  she  whispers.  Her  lips  are  split. 
She  does  not  have  enough  calories  in  her 
system  to  focus,  to  concentrate  on  my  face. 
"Zima."  Winter. 

Exhausted  by  her  effort,  she  drops  my 
arm.  I  try  to  talk  to  her.  Speak  to  me,  I  say. 
Stay  alive,  at  least  until  a  doctor  gets  here. 
But  I  know,  as  she  does,  that  there  is  no 
doctor  coming. 

The  woman  says  she  once  played  the  vi- 
olin. She  doesn't  remember  if  she  is  Mus- 
lim, Serb,  or  Croat.  She  is  from  Sarajevo, 
that's  all.  Then  she  pulls  the  covers  over  her 
head  and  retreats  under  the  blankets.  She 
becomes,  once  again,  a  pile  of  clothes.  □ 


1CC1 


War 


inuhd  from  page  ion  to  watch  him  lay 
,000  people  in  the  next  five  years,  for 
h  he  was  criticized  by  the  French  press; 
overnment  ultimately  forced  him  to  repay 
million  of  its  investment  in  the  company. 
ut  the  events  that  defined  Arnault's  ca- 
began  in  1988,  when  he  launched  his 
year  struggle  for  control  of  L.V.M.H., 
;r  of  Louis  Vuitton  luggage  and  Moet 
tipagnes,  which  like  Gucci  had  fallen 
to  warfare  among  its  controlling  fami- 
First  working  with,  then  turning  against, 
vl.H.'s  patriarch,  a  French  business  leg- 
named  Henri  Racamier,  Arnault  tri- 
lled only  after  a  high-profile  fight  in 
h  he  leveled  against  Racamier  charges, 
nproven,  of  embezzlement,  Nazi  collab- 
on,  and  ties  to  the  extreme  right-wing 
ician  Jean-Marie  Le  Pen.  The  spectacle 
lesmerized  the  French  public  that  at  one 
t  President  Francois  Mitterrand  dis- 
;d  its  implications  in  a  televised  address, 
or  years  the  Parisian  press  demonized 
iult,  holding  him  up  as  the  personifica- 
of  the  brash  American-style  business 
cs  that  have  taken  hold  in  Europe  dur- 
:he  90s.  His  moves  at  Dior,  meanwhile, 
re  he  fired  six  top  managers  in  four 
s,  outraged  and  confused  Paris's  staid 
ion  world,  as  did  his  selection  of  a  se- 
of  young  English  and  American  up- 
:s— John  Galliano  at  Dior,  Alexander 
)ueen  at  Givenchy,  Marc  Jacobs  at 
is  Vuitton,  and  Michael  Kors  at  Ce- 
-to  executive  design  posts.  Still,  Ar- 
t  has  now  been  around  long  enough- 
amassed  so  much  power— that  many  in 
s  have  embraced  him;  he  and  his  sec- 
wife,  who  tours  as  a  classical  pianist, 
fixtures  at  Dior  and  Givenchy  shows, 
re  they  are  avidly  fawned  over.  Howev- 
ieither  his  dawning  acceptance  nor  the 
ping  of  age  has  mellowed  Arnault.  If 


anything,  his  more  recent  deals,  including 
long,  drawn-out  squabbles  with  Guinness 
and  his  tenacious  fight  for  control  of  the 
DFS  retail  chain,  have  created  an  image  of 
Arnault  as  a  man  constitutionally  incapable 
of  peaceful  commerce. 

As  often  happens,  all  this  is  difficult  to 
reconcile  with  the  man  himself.  In  per- 
son Arnault  comes  across  as  a  wry,  almost 
whimsical  sort  whose  thick,  graying  hair 
and  bushy  eyebrows  offset  a  boyish  grin 
and  pale  blue-green  eyes;  the  eyes  are  no- 
table for  the  largest,  hardest  black  pupils  I 
have  ever  seen.  Arnault  speaks  lightly  ac- 
cented English  and  has  a  charming  tenden- 
cy to  pronounce  the  th  sound  as  an  /'  thus 
the  word  "something"  comes  out  "some- 
fing."  When  we  talked  he  often  clasped  and 
unclasped  his  hands,  as  if  washing  them. 

The  nerve  center  of  Arnault's  empire  is 
a  nondescript  glass-and-marble  building  on 
Paris's  Avenue  Hoche,  a  few  hundred  yards 
from  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  Downstairs,  a 
single  receptionist  and  a  lonely  security 
guard  are  the  lobby's  only  adornments.  Ar- 
nault and  his  longtime  alter  ego,  Pierre 
Gode,  together  with  their  self-described 
"utility  infielder,"  a  36-year-old  American 
lawyer  named  James  Lieber,  inhabit  a  dim- 
ly Ut,  gray-walled  warren  of  offices  on  the 
seventh  floor  that  are  so  cramped  Gode 
seems  to  bend  as  he  enters  each  room.  The 
only  open  space  is  a  floor  above,  where 
Arnault  holds  meetings  in  a  boardroom  of 
cinematic  proportions.  It's  said  that  he 
loathes  excessive  noise,  and,  indeed,  few 
sounds  intrude  from  the  streets  below. 

For  much  of  1998,  as  the  Asian  financial 
crisis  crimped  the  global  appetite  for  luxury 
goods,  the  deal-making  machinations  hatched 
on  the  seventh  floor  were  becalmed.  Then 
last  autumn,  amid  signs  that  the  Asian 
economy  was  recovering,  Arnault  decided  it 
was  time  to  do  what  he  does  best:  go  shop- 
ping. Among  the  first  acquisitions  he  stud- 


ied in  detail  was  Sanofi  Beaute,  which  in- 
cludes the  legendary  couturier  Yves  Saint 
Laurent.  It  had  been  put  up  for  sale  by  its 
French  owner,  Sanofi,  a  pharmaceutical  com- 
pany. Arnault  was  on  the  verge  of  striking  a 
deal  when,  on  Christmas  Eve,  he  backed 
out  of  negotiations,  saying  publicly  that 
Sanofi's  price  was  too  high.  Instead,  in  their 
quiet  labyrinth  above  Avenue  Hoche,  Ar- 
nault and  Gode  finally  turned  their  atten- 
tions to  Gucci. 

The  plan,  Arnault  repeatedly  insists,  was 
never  to  attempt  an  immediate  takeover. 
Rather,  he  planned  to  gobble  up  vast  quanti- 
ties of  Gucci  stock— enough  to  scare  off  any 
white-knight  rescuers— and  put  pressure  on 
De  Sole  to  grant  L.V.M.H.  several  seats  on 
the  company's  board  of  directors.  "It  would 
have  been  dangerous  to  take  over  Gucci," 
Gode  asserts.  "We  had  some  doubts;  we 
wondered  whether  this  trend  [of  profitabil- 
ity], which  is  wonderful  for  three  years, 
would  go  on  without  any  problems."  Once 
he  was  represented  on  Gucci's  board,  Ar- 
nault says,  he  planned  to  study  the  company 
in  depth  and  reassess  the  situation  in  three 
to  five  years.  "Then,"  he  says,  "maybe  we 
make  a  bid." 

Common  sense  told  Arnault  that  De 
Sole  would  feel  threatened,  but  he  and 
Gode  considered  Gucci  all  but  defenseless. 
Besides,  Arnault  thought,  he  held  two  hole 
cards.  One  was  Louis  Vuitton's  president, 
De  Sole's  friend  Yves  Carcelle.  "The  rela- 
tionship between  De  Sole  and  Yves  was 
good— at  least,  that  is  what  Yves  told  me 
several  times,"  Arnault  says.  "I  thought. 
Well,  why  couldn't  we  get  along  with  him? 
We  really  thought  that  something  [friendly] 
was  possible,  with  no  trouble."  Even  more 
valuable  in  Arnault's  mind  was  his  second 
hole  card,  an  expatriate  American  lawyer 
named  Bill  McGurn,  a  senior  partner  in 
the  Paris  office  of  Cleary,  Gottlieb,  Steen 
&  Hamilton.  McGurn,  who  had  done  work 
in  the  past  for  both  Gucci  and  L.V.M.H., 


VANITY     FAIR 


War 


i;  o  Dc  Sole's  oldest  and 
having  known  him  since 
thei  al  Harvard. 
In  ths   ni-,1  week  oi  January,  Arnault 
ove 

t/'^Vnr  options  will  narrow  down  very 
\J rapidly,  because  Arnault  moves  very 
fast,"  Michael  Zaoui  was  telling  the  room- 
ful of  Gucci  executives  in  London  that  Fri- 
day, January  S,  two  days  after  L.V.M.H. 
publicly  disclosed  its  stake  in  Gucci  stock. 
"If  I  am  right,"  the  Morgan  Stanley  banker 
continued,  "you  will  see  that  his  next  move 
is  to  buy  the  Prada  shares.  You  need  to  call 
around  [to  both  Arnault  and  Prada]  and 
say  'Stop!'  before  it  happens." 

To  Zaoui's  dismay,  De  Sole  wouldn't  do 
it.  The  Gucci  chief  thought  there  was  a 
good  chance  that  Arnault's  intentions  real- 
ly were  friendly,  as  Carcelle  had  empha- 
sized in  their  phone  call,  and  he  didn't 
want  to  risk  alienating  him.  "Tom  [Ford] 
says  I  am  too  trusting,"  De  Sole  says.  "It's 
true."  Ford,  in  fact,  had  been  ready  to  man 
the  battlements  from  the  outset.  "Don't 
trust  them,  Domenico,"  Ford  had  warned 
in  a  call  from  Milan.  "Don't  believe  any- 
thing they  say." 


De  Sole  told  Zaoui  he  worried  that  Ar- 
nault would  interpret  a  phone  call  to  Prada 
as  a  sign  of  weakness.  I  lie  Morgan  banker 
saw,  to  his  irritation,  that  De  Sole  was  tak- 
ing the  advice  of  his  law-school  pal  Bill 
McGurn,  who  was  now  representing  Guc- 
ci, over  the  counsel  of  an  investment  bank- 
er he  had  just  met.  "Bill  McGurn  is  a  good 
corporate  lawyer  and  a  great  guy,"  says  a 
Morgan  man,  "but  I  don't  know  how  much 
deal  experience  he  has." 

Zaoui  remained  resolute.  "Call  now,"  he 
said,  "or  you'll  be  sorry." 

But  De  Sole  wouldn't  call.  Then  two 
days  later,  on  Sunday  morning,  January  10, 
Zaoui  was  summoned  to  an  emergency 
conference  call  convened  by  De  Sole.  Hear- 
ing a  weekend  rumor  that  Arnault  had  in- 
deed bought  the  Prada  shares,  De  Sole  had 
finally  telephoned  Patrizio  Bertelli  and,  by 
claiming  he  knew  that  the  sale  had  hap- 
pened, tricked  Bertelli  into  admitting  it.  In 
fact,  Bertelli  had  telephoned  Arnault's  team 
within  hours  of  L.V.M.H. 's  announcement 
earlier  that  week,  and  had  flown  to  Paris  to 
cement  the  deal  the  next  day.  De  Sole  im- 
mediately realized  he  had  been  wrong  to 
freeze  Bertelli  out. 

"Shit!  Shit!  What  do  we  do  now?"  the 
Gucci  chief  fretted  on  the  Sunday-morning 
call.  Zaoui,  hoping  to  improve  his  standing 
in  De  Sole's  eyes,  decided  to  rub  his  new 


Bands  on  the  Run 

KEY    TO    ILLUSTRATION    ON    PAGES    106-7 


1.  Bruce  Springsteen.  2.  Bob  Dylan  3.  Paul  Simon.  4.  Lauryn  Hill.  5.  Dexter  Holland  of  the  Offspring. 
6.  Whitney  Houston.  7.  Jewel.  8.  Cher.  9.  Tori  Amos.  10.  Alanis  Morisserte  1 1.  Elton  John.  12.  Carlos  Sanlana. 
13.  Anthony  Kiedis  of  the  Red  Hot  Chili  Peppers.  14.  Flea  of  the  Red  Hot  Chili  Peppers.  15.  George 
Clinton  of  P-Funk.  16.  Brian  Wilson.  17.  Sarah  McLachlan.  18.  Sheryl  Crow.  19.  Chrissie  Hynde.  20.  Brandy. 
21.  Debbie  Harry.  22.  Adam  Horovitz  of  the  Beastie  Boys.  23.  Adam  Yauch  of  the  Beastie  Boys.  24.  Mike 
Diamond  of  the  Beastie  Boys.  25.  Steven  Tyler  of  Aerosmith.  26.  Joe  Perry  of  Aerosmith.  27.  John  Rzeznik 
of  the  Goo  Goo  Dolls.  28.  Mark  McGrath  of  Sugar  Ray.  29.  Michael  Stipe  of  REM.  30.  Wyclef  Jean. 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


client's  nose  in  his  mistake.  "I  wish  w< 
called  Friday,"  the  Morgan  banker  said. 
might  have  made  a  difference."  Belatec 
De  Sole  realized  what  Zaoui  was  sayi 
was  true:  it  was  time  to  gird  for  battle 
be  embarrassingly  candid,"  De  Sole  s; 


today,  "we  didn't  think  through  our  inil  F'" 


I* 


strategy  very  well.  We  were  caught  co 
pletely  by  surprise.  They  were  [takeov  I*8 
professionals. ...  We  spend  our  time  fig  p 
ing  out  how  to  sell  more  handbags." 


ttfl 


r. 


. 


I  fl( 


The  first  step  was  to  feel  out  Arnai 
who  apparently  now  controlled  abc 
15  percent  of  Gucci's  stock.  The  next  d  :": 
Monday,  January  11,  Zaoui  telephoned  P 
Goldman  Sachs  banker  in  London,  Jei 
Luc  Biamonti,  who  was  rumored  to 
working  with  L.V.M.H.  Biamonti,  w 
confirming  that  he  represented  L.V.M.l 
refused  to  say  precisely  how  many  sha, 
Arnault  had  now  acquired.  "This  is  an  o 
cial  message,"  Zaoui  told  him.  "Stop  not  ^ 

The  next  day,  when  De  Sole  called  ^ 
late-night  strategy  meeting,  Zaoui  attempt  P 
to  put  teeth  in  his  message.  Gucci's  boj  il 
was  scheduled  to  meet  the  next  morni#Ji 
Zaoui  told  Biamonti  in  a  second  call 
less  L.V.M.H.  agreed  immediately  to  refr; 
from  acquiring  more  than  20  percent 
Gucci's  stock,  the  directors  could  (  W 
nounce  his  actions  as  hostile,  jeopardizi 
any  chance  Arnault  might  have  for  ,: 
friendly  takeover.  Arnault  seemed  open 
the  idea,  but  De  Sole  wouldn't  hear  of  it 

"What  do  you  mean,  20  percent?"  t 
Gucci  chief  said.  "I  thought  he  was  at 
Twenty  is  outrageous!" 

"I  really  think  you  should  take  it,"  Za 
counseled.  "Twenty  is  better  than  w! 
might  happen  next." 

"No!  No!  That  is  unacceptable!" 
Sole  said.  "We  can't  give  one  sharehoh  * 
20  percent." 

It  was  a  serious  miscalculation.  The 
fusal  to  halt  Arnault's  stock  purchases 
Gucci  with  one  option:  find  a  white-knij  m 
investor.  The  next  day,  after  the  board  ref1?11 
firmed  the  company's  decision  to  remain 
dependent,  De  Sole  got  on  the  phone  a  Bs 
began  calling  C.E.O.'s  throughout  the  fa  ^ 
ion  and  luxury-goods  industry.  By  Sun(  f 
he  had  contacted  nine  companies  and 
lected  eight  "no  thank  you"s;  a  ninth  ca  P 
two  weeks  later.  The  problem  was  obvio 
Directors  hadn't  yet  authorized  him  to  ]  h 
Gucci  up  for  sale,  and  no  C.E.O.  was  f 
pared  to  buy  shares  in  a  company  in  wh 
he  might  shortly  be  a  powerless  minority  w 
vestor  under  L.V.M.H. 's  control.  The  e> 
cise  left  De  Sole  despondent.  "It  looked 
we  were  entirely  defenseless,"  he  rememb<  "  4 
"It  was  incredibly  depressing." 

Before  long  De  Sole  began  to  feel  til* 
Arnault  knew  his  every  move.  On  the  o  k* 
two  occasions  in  the  next  several  w&  H 


Mi 


he  was  able  to  interest  a  potential 
alight  in  a  deal,  Arnault  struck  both 
snapping  up  large  blocks  of  Gucci 
1  a  series  of  moves  that  soon  brought 
dings  to  a  stunning  34.4  percent.  "It 
-nost  like  they  were  trying  to  send  a 
;e,  which  was  'If  you  continue  to  try 
ner  with  someone  else,  we  will  keep 

shares,'"  says  Robert  Singer.  Ar- 
rins  when  asked  about  this.  "Through 
inkers  we  knew  exactly  what  was 
on,"  he  says  of  De  Sole's  aborted 
.  "The  people  who  refused  him 
•  us." 

sing  the  desperation  in  De  Sole's 
\rnault  remained  confident  the  Guc- 
ci could  be  coaxed  into  a  friendly 
>ne  of  De  Sole's  board  members  told 
d  of  Arnault's  that  what  Gucci  need- 

"a  godfather,"  a  larger  company  to 
ts  fortunes.  "We  were  encouraged  by 
\rnault  says.  But  the  most  promising 
ame  from  Gode's  regular  chats  with 
cGurn,  the  Cleary,  Gottlieb  lawyer. 
hoped  McGurn  would  develop  into 
ad  "back  channel"  for  the  two  sides 
,  and  he  did.  During  January  and 
iry,  Gode  says,  McGurn  repeatedly 
i  him  that  a  friendly  deal  remained 
ly  possible,  but  likely.  "We  were  very 
aged  by  what  Bill  was  saying,"  con- 
3ode.  "We  really  thought  we  could 
ne  kind  of  agreement  with  them." 

th  his  attempts  to  find  a  white  knight 
i  failure,  there  was  nothing  for  De 
i  do  but  meet  with  Arnault.  With  so 
jgos  involved,  it  took  most  of  the  fol- 
week  to  arrange  a  time  and  a  place. 
It  wanted  to  keep  things  informal  in 
of  wooing  De  Sole,  but  the  Gucci 
growing  angrier  by  the  day,  had  no 
an  of  being  romanced.  "I  asked  him 
ler,"  Arnault  recalls,  "and  he  asked 
Morgan  Stanley." 

y  first  met  alone  at  6:35  on  Friday 
g,  January  22,  in  a  conference  room 
rgan  Stanley's  Paris  offices.  Summit 
igs  between  the  principals  in  major 
er  situations  are  typically  as  scripted 
fiearsed  as  presidential  debates— De 
'as  prepped  by  Bill  McGurn  in  Flo- 
-and  the  70  minutes  Arnault  and  De 
pent  together  was  no  exception.  Ar- 
ictually  read  a  typewritten  statement, 
ding  to  De  Sole's  notes,  the  French- 
avished  praise  on  Gucci's  manage- 
said  it  would  be  "a  disaster"  if  De 
nd  Ford  resigned,  and  insisted  that 
t  thing  he  wanted  was  "to  go  to  war" 
jucci.  He  promised  that  De  Sole 
d  do  well"  under  L.V.M.H.  control. 
Isle,  at  first  surprised  by  Arnault's 
onslaught,  fell  back  on  McGurn's  in- 
ons.  De  Sole  urged  Arnault,  whom 
led  "Mr.  Arnault,"  either  to  stop  buy- 


ing Gucci  stock  or  to  make  a  bid  for  the 
entire  company.  Arnault  demurred,  saying 
that  what  he  really  wanted  was  three  seats 
on  De  Sole's  board. 

De  Sole  returned  with  his  own  proposal 
five  nights  later.  He  suggested  that  L.V.M.H. 
be  granted  two  seats  on  Gucci's  board  in 
return  for  reducing  its  stake,  now  at  34.4 
percent,  to  20  percent,  guaranteeing  the 
company  its  independence  and  leaving  De 
Sole  and  Ford  in  control.  Arnault  prom- 
ised to  consider  it,  but  at  their  third  meet- 
ing, on  the  evening  of  February  8,  he 
rejected  all  of  Gucci's  ideas.  To  De  Sole 
he  seemed  to  gyrate  wildly  from  airy 
promises  to  veiled  threats.  "It  was  almost 
dyslexic  to  me,"  De  Sole  remembers.  "I 
thought,  This  is  the  weirdest  thing  I've 
ever  seen.  But  then  he  is  famous  for  hav- 
ing no  people  skills  whatever." 

Even  as  De  Sole  and  Arnault  continued 
their  talks,  Pierre  Gode  kept  up  his  qui- 
et chats  with  McGurn.  Working  closely  with 
De  Sole,  the  American  lawyer  encouraged 
Gode's  hopes  of  a  friendly  deal,  even  while 
rattling  Gucci's  sabers,  insisting  to  Gode 
that  De  Sole  had  any  number  of  traps  he 
was  waiting  to  spring.  On  February  4,  Mc- 
Gurn mentioned  something  that  caught 
Gode's  ear.  He  said  Gucci  could  issue  mil- 
lions of  new  shares  of  stock  to  any  white- 
knight  investor  who  came  along,  a  prospect 
to  frighten  any  hostile  suitor,  whose  own 
shares  would  be  severely  diluted. 

Gode  thought  such  a  tactic  was  impossi- 
ble. Before  moving  on  Gucci,  in  fact,  Ar- 
nault had  asked  his  New  York  lawyers  at 
Davis  Polk  &  Wardwell  about  this  very 
possibility.  Davis  Polk  told  Arnault  of  a 
New  York  Stock  Exchange  rule  that  forbids 
any  member  to  issue  new  shares  amounting 
to  more  than  20  percent  of  its  capital.  Af- 
ter talking  to  McGurn,  Gode  shot  off  a  let- 
ter to  stock-exchange  officials  in  New  York, 
asking  to  be  assured  that  Gucci  could  not 
issue  more  than  20  percent  without  a  spe- 
cial waiver,  and  asking  to  be  notified  in  the 
event  such  a  waiver  was  ever  requested. 

What  neither  Gode  nor  his  New  York 
lawyers  learned  until  it  was  too  late  was 
that  the  20  percent  rule  did  not  apply  to 
foreign  firms  such  as  Gucci,  which,  accord- 
ing to  a  separate  set  of  exchange  regula- 
tions, were  subject  instead  to  laws  in  their 
home  countries.  De  Sole's  own  attorneys, 
however,  knew  this  loophole  by  heart,  as 
Arnault,  to  his  regret,  was  shortly  to  learn. 

In  the  wake  of  his  third  meeting  with  De 
Sole,  Arnault  acknowledges,  "I  was  frus- 
trated." They  talked  and  talked  but  seemed 
to  be  getting  nowhere.  After  conferring 
with  Gode,  Arnault  decided  to  turn  up  the 
pressure.  In  a  letter  to  De  Sole,  he  formally 
notified  Gucci  that  he  planned  to  convene 


a  special  shareholder  meeting— his  right  as 
a  large  shareholder— to  nominate  someone 
for  membership  on  Gucci's  board. 

Hearts  sank  in  the  Gucci  camp.  "It  was 
not  good,  just  more  arm-twisting,"  a  Gucci 
insider  recalls.  "It  was  very  clear  that  we 
were  in  a  box."  Somehow  they  had  to  find 
a  white  knight  who  would  buy  enough 
Gucci  stock  to  dilute  Arnault's  holdings. 
Scott  Simpson,  an  attorney  in  the  London 
office  of  the  powerhouse  New  York  law 
firm  Skadden,  Arps,  Slate,  Meagher  & 
Flom,  had  been  pushing  a  far-fetched  idea 
on  De  Sole  for  weeks.  If  they  couldn't  find 
a  buyer  for  Gucci  shares,  Simpson  rea- 
soned, maybe  they  could  create  one.  Simp- 
son wanted  to  establish  an  Employee  Stock 
Ownership  Plan,  or  ESOP,  by  which  Gucci's 
board  could  grant  a  huge  block  of  new 
stock  to  company  workers.  Simpson  had 
been  corresponding  with  stock-exchange  of- 
ficials in  New  York  for  months  and  knew 
about  the  loophole  that  made  it  possible. 
Still,  neither  Zaoui  nor  De  Sole  was  enthu- 
siastic. On  Wall  Street,  ESOP-related  take- 
over defenses  are  considered  gimmicky  and 
legally  iffy.  A  court  might  easily  strike  an 
esop  down  for  what  it  was,  a  defensive 
ploy,  destroying  Gucci's  credibility  with  its 
own  shareholders. 

At  a  Gucci  board  meeting  on  Sunday, 
February  14,  Zaoui  persuaded  directors  to 
try  one  last  time  to  wring  a  standstill  from 
Arnault.  He  also  wanted  to  set  the  stage  in 
the  event  Gucci  was  pushed  to  adopt  the 
ESOP  defense.  Forbes  magazine  had  specu- 
lated that  Arnault  might  be  forced  to  pay 
up  to  $100  a  share  to  buy  Gucci  outright, 
an  outrageous  number  by  most  estimates. 
Zaoui,  looking  to  assure  shareholders  Gucci 
wasn't  being  unreasonable,  realized  De  Sole 
had  to  distance  himself  from  such  specula- 
tion. They  needed  to  put  a  fair  price  tag  on 
Gucci,  and  the  next  day  De  Sole  passed  it 
on  in  a  call  to  Arnault  himself:  $85  a  share, 
and  he  had  to  buy  the  whole  company. 

The  next  morning  Arnault,  who  was 
boarding  a  plane  to  New  York,  gave  his  an- 
swer: No.  But,  the  Frenchman  said,  he 
would  still  entertain  a  Gucci  proposal  to 
swap  seats  on  Gucci's  board  for  a  standstill 
agreement.  De  Sole  was  jubilant;  it  ap- 
peared to  be  a  breakthrough.  That  after- 
noon Zaoui  faxed  a  version  of  a  standstill 
agreement  to  Pierre  Gode  in  Paris.  It  was  a 
complex  legal  document,  with  multiple  re- 
strictions on  the  role  L.V.M.H.  directors 
could  play  on  the  board.  Gode  asked  for 
two  days  to  examine  it.  De  Sole  refused, 
saying  the  matter  needed  to  be  resolved  at 
a  Gucci  board  meeting  two  mornings  later. 
They  compromised  on  five  p.m.  on  Wednes- 
day, February  17. 

At  5:01  the  L.V.M.H.  fax  inched  out  of 
De  Sole's  machine.  In  it,  Arnault  seemed  to 
backtrack,  asking  Gucci's  board  for  "a  rea- 


VANITY     FA 


War 


i  into  a  standstill  agree 
Sole  pushed  to  the  edge  of  his 
■  ,  ik  und  the-clock,  seven-day-a- 
y  sessions,  lost  his  temper. 
He  wants  a  reason'.'  I'll  give  him  a  rea- 
son1' he  fumed. 

I  he  next  morning  Gucci  announced  the 
formation  of  its  esop,  on  which  it  bestowed 
voting  rights  for  20  million  new  Gucci 
shares;  overnight,  the  move  diluted  Ar- 
nault's slake  to  25.6  percent  and  created  in 
Gucci  workers  a  huge  new  friendly  share- 
holder. It  was  a  move  that  would  be  viewed 
in  both  camps  as  a  declaration  of  war. 

Pierre  Gode  blinked  when  he  saw  the 
Reuters  headline  cross  the  computer 
screen  on  his  desk.  He  didn't  know  what 
an  esop  was.  At  first  he  thought  De  Sole 
had  pulled  off  a  leveraged  buyout.  Arnault 
received  the  news  via  fax  at  his  New  York 
hotel.  He  didn't  know  what  an  ESOP  was, 
either.  "I  thought  it  was  a  poison  pill,"  Ar- 
nault recalls.  "I  told  Pierre,  'Give  me  a  re- 
port on  it  when  you  understand  it.'" 

Once  Gode  understood  it,  he  and  his 
aides  immediately  told  reporters  that  De 
Sole's  esop  was  a  clear  violation  of  New 
York  Stock  Exchange  rules.  Not  until  later 
that  day  did  Gode  realize  that  no  one  at 
L.V.M.H.  had  ever  followed  up  on  the  letter 
to  exchange  officials,  which  had  never  drawn 
a  response.  After  urgent  calls  were  made  to 
New  York,  a  senior  stock-exchange  official 
explained  the  new-shares  loophole  in  a  fax  to 
Gode  the  next  day.  "Our  lawyers,"  Arnault 
says  with  a  theatrical  roll  of  his  eyes,  "were 
very  surprised  that  Gucci  could  do  that." 
James  Lieber's  jaw  barely  moves  as  he  reluc- 
tantly acknowledges  the  importance  of  the 
overlooked  loophole.  "One  does  not  nor- 
mally expect  that  a  company  can  double  its 
shareholder  base  as  a  defensive  mechanism," 
he  notes  stiffly.  "We  would  have  had  a  very 
different  understanding  of  the  battlefield." 

Arnault  had  gone  to  bed  Wednesday 
night  believing  he  was  on  the  verge  of  gain- 
ing the  seats  he  wanted  on  Gucci's  board, 
and  says  that  to  this  day  he  cannot  fathom 
what  set  De  Sole  off.  He  resisted  the  im- 
pulse to  telephone  the  Gucci  chief  to  find 
out.  "You  don't  call  someone,"  he  says, 
"who  has  just  shot  you  in  the  back." 

L.V.M.H.  lawyers,  meanwhile,  sued  to 
block  the  esop.  A  week  later  a  Dutch 
court,  sitting  in  Amsterdam,  handed  Ar- 
nault a  partial  victory.  It  temporarily  froze 
the  voting  rights  of  both  the  esop  and 
L.V.M.H.  and  ordered  both  sides  to  begin 
negotiating  in  good  faith.  The  court,  how- 
ever, refused  Arnault's  request  to  close  the 
loophole,  which  remained  wide  open,  ready 
for  De  Sole  to  use  again  at  his  whim. 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


The  morning  after  the  court's  ruling, 
Godi  taxed  De  Sole  a  request  to  begin 
the  COUrt-ordered  negotiations.  Alter  much 
back-and-lbrth  (and  a  well-received  Gucci 
tail  women's  collection  in  Milan  on  March 
2,  at  which  rumors  were  rampant  of  Ar- 
nault or  an  Arnault  spy  in  the  audience),  a 
meeting  between  the  two  sides  was  set  for 
Friday,  March  19,  at  Amsterdam's  Hotel 
Krasnapolsky.  Arnault  sat  back  to  wait— 
and  worry.  He  wanted  to  believe  he  still 
had  De  Sole  cornered,  but  doubts  nagged 
at  him.  At  a  March  18  press  gathering,  Ar- 
nault answered  questions  about  De  Sole's 
intentions  with  a  plaintive  query:  "Are  the 
Gucci  people  really  sincere?" 

It  was  a  good  question.  De  Sole,  in 
fact,  was  eagerly  looking  for  ways  to  es- 
cape. While  the  esop  buoyed  the  morale 
of  his  team  and  bought  them  some  time,  it 
did  little  to  alter  the  fundamentals  of  their 
quandary.  Unless  they  could  find  a  white 
knight,  they  would  return  to  the  bargain- 
ing table  in  the  same  hopeless  situation  in 
which  they  had  left  it.  In  the  last  week  of 
February  a  potential  buyer— a  European 
industrial  company  which  Gucci  execu- 
tives decline  to  identify— emerged,  but  af- 
ter three  days  of  furious  negotiations  the 
talks  fell  apart,  leaving  De  Sole  as  despon- 
dent as  ever.  "We  were  dead— dead,"  he 
recalls. 

Then,  on  Thursday,  March  4,  Michael 
Zaoui  took  a  call  from  a  Morgan  Stanley 
colleague,  an  investment  banker  named 
Joseph  Perella— the  same  Joe  Perella  who 
for  15  years  had  served  as  the  partner  of 
famed  New  York  investment  banker  Bruce 
Wasserstein,  until  an  early-1990s  falling-out 
landed  him  at  Morgan.  Two  weeks  earlier, 
Perella  told  Zaoui,  he  had  paid  a  regular 
courtesy  call  on  Francois  Pinault.  A  garru- 
lous, self-made  billionaire,  Pinault  is  a 
household  name  in  Paris,  where  he  is  a 
confidant  of  French  president  Jacques 
Chirac's.  His  assets  are  better  known;  they 
include  Christie's  auction  house,  Converse 
shoes,  and  Samsonite  luggage.  Running 
through  a  laundry  list  of  acquisition  candi- 
dates for  Pinault  that  day,  Perella  had  men- 
tioned Gucci.  Pinault  seemed  intrigued. 
After  a  quick  trip  to  New  York,  where  he 
strolled  Gucci's  Fifth  Avenue  store,  Pinault 
telephoned  Perella  to  ask  if  he  could  meet 
the  company's  top  executives. 

When  Zaoui  reached  De  Sole  with  the 
news  that  Pinault  wanted  to  talk,  the  Gucci 
chief  shrugged.  "I'd  never  heard  of  the  guy," 
De  Sole  admits  today.  "I  didn't  have  a  clue." 
He  consented  to  meet  Pinault  in  London 
that  Monday,  March  8,  but  thought  little 
more  of  it.  At  the  meeting,  De  Sole  gave 
Pinault  and  a  top  aide,  Patricia  Barbizet, 
his  standard  speech,  explaining  how  he  and 
Ford  had  resurrected  Gucci.  Pinault  liked 
what  he  heard.  So  did  De  Sole.  "Michael," 


he  told  Zaoui  afterward,  "I  really  like  js 
guy.  I  think  we  could  do  somethinj  fe 
second  meeting  was  arranged  lor  tha  : 
day,  March  12,  at  Pinault's  Paris  pJ 
house.  It  was  time  lor  Pinault  to  met  a ■■' 
man  who  was  Gucci's  principal  non  ffli 
cial  asset:  Tom  Ford. 

jits 

Clad  in  his  customary  black,  Ford  I* 
sently  stirring  his  vodka-tonic  a  m 
pick  through  the  details  of  the  tak  1 1 
drama  that  has  taken  over  his  life.  I  P 
drizzly  April  evening  in  London,  an  IviU 
are  sitting  in  one  of  his  favorite  M  V> 
restaurants,  Le  Caprice,  at  a  corner  |« 
where,  Ford  informs  me,  Princess  I  p 
used  to  lunch  regularly,  her  back  le: 
crowd  of  people  whose  eyes  followe  ■ 
every  move.  Ford  sits  facing  the  room  iDi 
scanning  the  other  diners.  An  item  ii  ■ 
of  the  London  papers  this  morning  r<  i  ii 
ed  that  Arnault  had  hired  the  vauntec  if.  I 
York  investigative  firm  Kroll  Associa  p 
snoop  on  Ford.  Ford  has  seen  a  man  nun 
ing  in  a  car  outside  his  Paris  apartmei  lira 
last  several  nights,  and  he  suspects  the  m 
is  a  Kroll  operative. 

"I'm  always  suspicious,  you  know  n 
says.  "Maybe  it's  because  before  I  ca:  n 
Gucci  I  used  to  work  on  Seventh  Av  m 
in  the  Garment  District,  and  those  t:: 
just  screw  each  other  left  and  right,  n 
yeah,  from  the  very  beginning,  I  <  m 
trust  Arnault.  Someone  doesn't  tell  yc  » 
truth  one  time,  why  should  you  b  » 
them  again?  There  was  an  arrogance  t  m 

"Frankly,"  Ford  goes  on,  "I  thin  m 
could  teach  Bernard  Arnault  a  few  t  ksi 
about  this  business.  His  designers  |fa 
know,  they're  great  designers— don't  g  ii 
wrong— but  they  don't  have  a  vision,  b 
vision  is  not  visible  in  the  boutique  tdi<i 
just  not  there.  You  don't  see  it  in  the  ;  adi 
tising,  in  the  packaging,  in  anything,  m 
don't  think  Arnault  gives  them  enougl  « , 
port.  Maybe  not  the  right  kind  of  supj  mjj 

Since  the  first  days  of  the  fight  in  m 
ary,  Arnault  has  been  careful  to  leave  b 
public  criticism  of  Gucci  management  De  Si 
praise  for  Ford.  "It's  a  transparent  att  ©j 
to  woo  me,"  says  Ford.  "You  know,  ht 
nard  Arnault  actually  met  with  my  ft  t" 
in  New  York.  One  of  them  came  to  ^  i  fa 
just  to  say  'Hi.'  Halfway  through  dinn<  " ",, 
says  that  she's  really  there  on  behi  p" 
Arnault.  She  was  supposed  to  call  Ai 
after  dinner."  Ford  stirs  his  drink.  "He  U 
proached  through  every  channel  excej  ly 
right  one— the  direct  one." 

While  Ford  has  repeatedly  stated  pu  ■ 
that  he  has  no  intention  of  allowing  hi  », 
to  be  wooed,  De  Sole  and  his  advisei  lau, 
uncomfortably  aware  that  Arnault  bo 
tempting  to  drive  a  wedge  between  hiri  i^ 
Ford.  And  with  good  reason:  at  least  ^ 
during  the  fight,  Ford  has  found  hi  gj, 


i  mixed  feelings.  Early  on  he  had  urged 
Sole  to  tell  Arnault  of  the  clause  in  his 
jloyment  contract  that  allowed  him  to 
gn  if  anyone  acquired  35  percent  of 
;ci  stock— "the  Dom-Tom  bomb"— but 
:n  L.V.M.H.  brought  its  buying  spree  to 
reeching  halt  at  34.4  percent,  Ford  was 
plussed. 

I  was  furious!"  Ford  remembers.  "If 
I  gone  to  35,  I  would  have  been  vested, 
my  [stock]  options!"  While  Ford  won't 
how  much  he  stood  to  make,  newspa- 
5  will  later  report  that  he  holds  options 
two  million  Gucci  shares  at  $45  a 
re;  with  Gucci  stock  hovering  at  $85, 
designer  stood  to  make  roughly  $80 
lion. 

7ord  had  no  mixed  feelings,  however, 
;n  De  Sole  asked  him  to  meet  Francois 
ault.  At  the  March  12  lunch  in  Pinault's 
h  Arrondissement  town  house,  Ford 
Uy  took  in  the  collection  of  contempo- 
/  art  that  lined  the  walls.  He  admired 
man's  taste,  and  as  the  lunch  wore  on, 
warmed  to  the  man  as  well.  "What  I 
d  about  him  was  his  eyes;  there  was  an 
ant  rapport,"  Ford  remembers.  "I  liked 
way  he  talked  to  his  people.  He  clearly 
;ned  and  respected  the  opinions  of  the 
■pie  who  worked  for  him.  One  even  cor- 
ed him." 

Vfter  lunch  Ford  and  De  Sole  left,  alone, 

airing  to  a  conference  room  at  Morgan 

lley,  where  De  Sole  reminded  his  young 

tner  that  theirs  was  a  momentous  deci- 

i,  one  they  shouldn't  rush  into.  But  Ford 

emphatic.  Pinault,  he  said,  was  perfect. 

lice  man,  obviously  good  to  his  people. 

Pinault's  greatest  asset,  as  Ford  saw  it, 

his  ignorance.  "That  was  the  key  thing: 

knew  nothing!"  Ford  recalls,  smiling. 

e  didn't  need  his  [fashion]  expertise.  We 

ded  his  money.  The  last  thing  I  need  is 

leone  coming  into  my  office  giving  me 

ice  on  what  to  do.  I  don't  need  that  at 

stage  in  my  career.  And  neither  does 

menico.  That  was  the  No.   1  positive 

nt  to  Pinault." 

De  Sole  pressed  for  doubts,  but  Ford  re- 
ined adamant.  "I  always  go  with  my  gut 
inct,"  Ford  says  today.  "Besides,  what 
er  options  did  we  have?"  But  a  $3  bil- 
i  deal  over  one  lunch?  "What  can  I 
?"  says  Ford,  raising  his  palms.  "I'm  a 
go." 

i  y  that  evening,  lawyers  and  investment 
*  bankers  were  already  hard  at  work  at- 
ipting  to  bang  out  the  financial  details  of 
inault-Gucci  alliance.  Code  names  were 
igned.  Gucci  was  "Gold."  Pinault  was 
atinum."  L.V.M.H.  was  "Black."  Pinault, 
h  an  eye  on  the  impending  resumption  of 
Sole's  negotiations  with  Arnault,  set  a 
irch  19  deadline;  if  a  deal  couldn't  be 
lck  in  one  week,  there  would  be  no  deal. 


Despite  Ford's  go-ahead,  steep  obstacles 
remained.  By  the  next  afternoon,  in  fact, 
with  Ford  winging  west  for  a  trip  to  Los  An- 
geles and  then  on  to  Santa  Fe,  De  Sole  was 
anxiously  touring  London's  Royal  Air  Force 
Museum  with  Bill  McGurn,  certain  that  the 
deal  would  be  stillborn.  De  Sole  was  insist- 
ing that  Gucci  representatives  retain  control 
of  the  board,  and  the  two  sides  were  far 
apart  on  price.  A  long  conference  call  be- 
tween the  two  sides  the  next  day,  Sunday, 
only  confirmed  De  Sole's  pessimism.  Still, 
Pinault  arrived  at  the  Morgan  Stanley  town 
house  in  London  on  Monday  morning,  in- 
tent on  talking  more.  In  an  intense,  all-day 
negotiating  session,  during  which  De  Sole 
doggedly  held  to  his  positions,  Gucci  car- 
ried the  day.  De  Sole  would  control  five  of 
the  nine  board  seats,  and  Pinault— in  De 
Sole's  second  use  of  the  stock-exchange 
loophole— would  pay  $75  a  share  for  40  mil- 
lion additional  new  shares  of  Gucci  stock, 
or  42  percent  of  all  Gucci  stock.  The  new 
shares  would  dilute  Arnault's  holdings  to 
19.6  percent. 

Jubilant,  De  Sole  telephoned  Ford  in 
Santa  Fe,  where  he  was  visiting  his  grand- 
mother, who  was  recovering  from  an  ill- 
ness, and  urged  him  to  return  to  London. 
Pinault  had  something  else  up  his  sleeve, 
and  on  Wednesday  he  sat  down  to  fill  the 
pair  in.  At  their  first  meeting,  Pinault  had 
mentioned  that  he  might  be  interested  in 
acquiring  Sanofi  Beaute  with  its  Yves  Saint 
Laurent  division,  which  remained  for  sale 
after  Arnault's  Christmas  Eve  rejection.  If 
Ford  and  De  Sole  agreed,  Pinault  now 
said,  his  plan  was  to  buy  it,  announce  the 
purchase  in  two  days  at  the  same  press 
conference  in  which  they  were  to  unveil  the 
Gucci  deal,  and  hand  the  whole  thing  to 
De  Sole  and  Ford  to  run.  "He  asked,  did  I 
want  it,"  Ford  remembers.  "I  said,  'Yes!' 
YSL  is  the  No.  1  brand  in  all  the  world!" 

There  was  only  one  catch.  Pierre  Berge, 
YSL's  imperious  chairman,  had  retained 
control  of  his  own  board  while  under 
Sanofi's  aegis  and  was  rumored  to  have  op- 
posed the  December  deal  with  Arnault  be- 
cause he  refused  to  relinquish  that  control. 
Neither  Ford  nor  De  Sole,  anxious  to  avoid 
offending  Berge,  will  comment,  but  one 
source  close  to  their  talks  with  Pinault  indi- 
cates that  a  condition  of  their  agreeing  to 
manage  YSL  was  Pinault's  commitment  to 
ease  Berge  aside.  With  that  assurance  in 
hand,  the  Gucci  executives  walked  out  of 
the  meeting  stunned  at  the  turn  in  events. 
One  minute  they  were  poised  on  the 
precipice  of  a  hostile  takeover  that  could 
cost  them  their  jobs  and  the  company  they 
had  built;  now  here  they  were,  on  the  verge 
of  a  deal  that  would  give  them  $3  billion  in 
cash,  retain  their  independence,  and  launch 
Gucci  on  the  road  to  being  what  invest- 
ment bankers  call  a  "multi-brand  platform." 


With  Sanofi  Beaute  under  its  control,  in 
fact,  Gucci  would  be  transformed  at  once 
not  only  into  a  smaller  version  of  L.V.M.H. 
but  also  into  Arnault's  most  formidable 
competitor. 

Friday  morning,  March  19,  two  hours  be- 
fore he  and  Gode  were  finally  to  re- 
sume negotiations  with  Gucci  executives, 
James  Lieber  was  eating  breakfast  in  the 
lobby  of  the  Hotel  Krasnapolsky  when  his 
cell  phone  rang.  Calling  from  Paris,  his  sec- 
retary had  jaw-dropping  news.  A  headline 
had  just  crossed  the  Reuters  newswire  re- 
porting that  Gucci  had  announced  a  mas- 
sive deal  with  Francois  Pinault.  In  minutes 
Lieber  was  upstairs,  conferring  with  Gode. 
"What  do  we  do  now?"  Lieber  asked  at 
one  point,  indicating  their  11  a.m.  meeting 
with  Gucci. 

"We  keep  our  appointments,"  said  Gode. 

The  meeting,  in  a  downstairs  conference 
room,  was  predictably  short.  Gucci's  gen- 
eral counsel,  a  white-haired  American  at- 
torney named  Allan  Tuttle,  accompanied 
by  a  cluster  of  lawyers,  politely  declined  to 
give  Arnault's  men  any  further  information 
on  the  Pinault  deal.  "To  have  a  successful 
meeting,  three  things  are  required:  courtesy, 
transparency,  and  politeness,"  Gode  finally 
said.  "I  regret  that  this  morning  you  have 
shown  us  none  of  these."  And  with  that  the 
L.V.M.H.  men  rose  and  left. 

They  were  back  in  Paris  by  2:30,  sharing 
sandwiches  with  Arnault  in  an  L.V.M.H. 
conference  room.  Arnault  had  been  doubly 
startled  when  he  learned  the  news  that 
morning,  just  moments  after  delivering  the 
opening  speech  at  an  L.V.M.H.  manage- 
ment conference  at  Euro  Disneyland.  His 
outside  public-relations  person,  a  French- 
woman named  Anne  Meaux,  also  worked 
for  Pinault.  She  had  called,  told  him  of  the 
Pinault-Gucci  deal,  and  in  the  same  breath 
resigned  to  work  more  fully  for  Pinault.  "I 
thought  at  first,  It's  a  joke,  it's  impossible," 
Arnault  admits.  "After  10  minutes  we  got  a 
communique  with  all  the  [details].  I  said  to 
everybody,  'That's  incredible!'  And  then  I 
said  to  Yves  Carcelle,  'Well,  come  with  me, 
we'll  see  what  to  do.'" 

By  the  time  Gode  and  Lieber  returned 
from  Amsterdam,  Arnault  had  made  his 
decision.  As  he  saw  it,  he  had  but  two  op- 
tions: remain  a  large  but  powerless  minority 
investor  in  a  company  now  controlled  by 
hostile  parties,  or  attempt  to  buy  Gucci 
outright.  He  decided  to  bid,  announcing  a 
staggering  $8.7  billion  offer  for  Gucci  that 
same  afternoon.  He  also  sued  to  block  the 
Pinault  deal,  claiming  that  Pinault's  42  per- 
cent stake  in  Gucci  doomed  the  very  bid 
L.V.M.H.  was  now  making.  The  following 
week  the  Dutch  court,  while  again  instruct- 
ing L.V.M.H.  and  Gucci  to  engage  in  talks 
that  both  camps  now  realized  were  point- 


VANITY     FA 


I         i  A;ir 


would  rule  on  all  Arnault's 
I  hursday,  April  22.  Once 
ii  back  to  wait, 

.  i  feel  better,  lighter,  you  know,"  Robert 
J. Singe]  is  saying   '"More  rested." 
1  know."  I)e  Sole  says.  "Me  too." 

It  is  a  relaxed  band  of  Gucci  executives 
who  tromp  down  the  Jetway  at  London's 
Heathrow  Airport  for  the  short  flight  to 
Amsterdam,  where  they  will  attend  what 
(hey  all  fervently  hope  will  be  the  long  bat- 
tle's climactic  scene. 

"I  think  we've  got  them  in  a  box  right 
now,"  De  Sole  says  after  nestling  into  a 
coach  seat.  His  American  and  Dutch  attor- 
neys have  assured  him  there  is  little  chance 
the  Amsterdam  court  will  overturn  the  deal 
with  Pinault.  "I'm  not  that  concerned,"  he 
continues,  sipping  a  glass  of  sparkling  wa- 
ter. "Still,  it's  not  over  yet." 

The  moment  De  Sole  deplanes  in  Am- 
sterdam, reality  intervenes.  His  cell  phone 
bleats,  and  for  several  minutes,  as  he  paces 
the  baggage-claim  area,  he  remains  deep  in 
whispered  conversation.  "They've  leaked  to 
the  papers!"  he  says  finally,  thrusting  the 
phone  to  an  aide.  "They  say  Tom  canceled." 

It  is  Ford  on  the  phone;  he  has  been  try- 
ing to  reach  De  Sole  for  an  hour.  This 
morning's  Financial  Times  reported  that 
Ford,  as  part  of  the  court-imposed  "negotia- 
tions," had  agreed  to  a  meeting  with  Ar- 
nault. But  the  article  also  reported  details 
on  the  stock  options  in  Ford's  confidential 
employee  contract;  to  review  the  contract, 
L.V.M.H.  executives  had  signed  a  confiden- 
tiality agreement,  and  De  Sole  is  certain 
they  broke  it  by  leaking  to  the  Financial 
Times.  Ford,  irate,  then  canceled  the  meet- 
ing, as  L.V.M.H.  was  now  telling  reporters. 

Outraged,  De  Sole  stalks  to  his  waiting 


Mercedes    "They're  trying  to  poison  the 

well.  Scott  Simpson,  the  Skadden,  Arps  at- 
torney, tells   De  Sole  as  they  drive  toward 

downtown  Amsterdam.  "Then,  when  we  get 

all  pissed,  they  can  use  it  as  another  excuse 
why  they  can't  bid  [the  $8.7  billion]."  Gucci 
executives  remain  convinced  that  Arnault 
will  never  actually  bid  if  he  can  gain  effective 
control  of  the  company  for  far  less  money. 

De  Sole  glares  out  the  window.  "Tom  is 
very  upset,"  he  says.  "But  we're  pretty  calm. 
We  know  their  game  by  now." 

The  Amsterdam  court  that  presides  over 
Gucci's  fate  is  a  Tower  of  Babel-like 
monument  to  both  the  potential  and  the 
confusion  of  doing  business  in  the  new,  uni- 
fied Europe.  Every  fourth  person  in  the 
bland,  chapel-like  courtroom,  it  seems,  is  a 
translator  scribbling  notes,  into  English  for 
the  American  attorneys,  French  for  the 
French  attorneys,  or  Italian  for  the  burly 
Gucci  union  leaders  who  have  flown  up 
from  Florence.  All  day  long,  as  the  five 
black-robed  judges  preside  in  their  guttural 
Dutch,  the  Gucci  unionists  pass  yellow 
sheets  of  paper  among  themselves,  trying 
to  follow  what  is  going  on.  Even  De  Sole  is 
never  totally  sure.  "Who  is  that  guy  sitting 
on  the  left,  the  clerk?"  he  asks  the  Gucci 
group  over  breakfast  at  the  Hotel  de  1' Eu- 
rope. No  one  knows.  "Does  he  get  a  vote?" 
De  Sole  breaks  up.  "This  is  hilarious,"  he 
says,  laughing.  "No  one  can  understand  a 
thing  that  goes  on  here." 

Seagulls  dive  and  shriek  outside  the 
courtroom's  high  windows  as  the  Dutch 
attorneys  representing  L.V.M.H.,  Gucci, 
and  Pinault  take  turns  making  their  ar- 
guments. In  this,  as  in  most  takeover  bat- 
tles, the  court  assumes  the  character  of  a 
parent  impatiently  attempting  to  mediate 
among  bickering  children.  The  attorneys' 
arguments  quickly  take  on  a  numbing 
sameness— He  hit  me  first!  He  won't  play 


tl  K- 


fair!— and  generally  bear  little  connectidj) 
to  reality.  For  eight  stultifying  hours, 
spectators  fight  to  remain  awake 
L.V.M.H.  attorneys  argue,  among  oth 
things,  that  Arnault  is  a  kinder,  gentl 
C.E.O.  who  would  never  lay  off  Guc 
employees.  Gucci  attorneys,  meanwhil 
insist  that  their  deal  with  Pinault  was  njft 
"defensive"  in  nature  and  had  nothing 
do  with  L.V.M.H. 's  attack. 

In  the  end  everyone  is  disappointed,  i 
ter  De  Sole,  Gode,  and  one  of  Pinault's  e  r- 
ecutives  stand  and  deliver  brief  remark 
the  judges  note  that  they  will  have  no  fin  in- 
decision for  more  than  a  month.  In  tl  I 
meantime  they  leave  in  place  an  earlier  ord  *  ■ 
freezing  Gucci's  transaction  with  Pinault. 

"Another  six  weeks— I  dread  it,"  De  So 
tells  me.  He  rolls  his  eyes  in  disgust.  "I  c;  p 
already  see  it.  We  will  get  nothing  do: 
and  they  will  continue  to  torment  us." 

On  the  morning  of  Thursday,  May 
De  Sole  returned  to  the  Amsterdam  cou: 
room  to  hear  the  Dutch  judges'  final  de< 
sion  on  his  handiwork.  To  his  delight  tl  :  - 
verdict,  while  annulling  the  ESOP,  amount!  m 
to  a  ringing  affirmation  of  De  Sole's  ne     i 
partnership  with  Pinault.  The  first  perse 
De  Sole  called  was  Tom  Ford,  whom  1  p) 
woke  up  in  California. 

"It  was  a  complete  victory,  and  we  a  : 
delighted,"  De  Sole  told  me.  "It  was  a  ve 
trying  time  for  us,  and  we're  going  back 
work,  building  what  will  be  the  larges 
most  profitable  luxury  group  in  the  world 
The  Gucci  chief  said  that  Arnault  ar 
Gode  had  not  been  in  the  courtroom  b 
that  the  Dutch  attorney  for  L.V.M.H.  "can  is 
over  to  me  and  shook  my  hand,  which  w  b 
a  very  nice  gesture,  I  thought."  Nevertr. 
less,  L.V.M.H.  threatened  to  sue  once  agai 

Even  in  defeat,  Arnault  remains  Gucc  fc 
second-largest  shareholder,  and  an  angry  oii 
at  that.  De  Sole  may  have  won  this  seasoi  i 
battle,  but  he  may  yet  face  a  long  cold  war.    <p 


l 


At  the  end  of  Pauline's  visit  in  the  sprii  if 
of  1933,  Jane  and  Grant  went  to  Miami  f  lit- 
10  days,  then  returned  to  host  the  two  ol  | 
er  Hemingway  children  and  their  nanny 
Jaimanitas.  One  day  when  Jane  was  drivi 
her  son  Tony  along  with  Patrick  and  Bull 
by  Hemingway,  her  Chevrolet  was  forct 
off  the  highway  by  a  bus.  The  car  tumbli  m 
40  feet  into  a  ravine,  turning  over  thr  h 
times  as  Jane  clutched  her  son  to  her.  A  h 
cording  to  a  fragmentary  manuscript 
Jane's,  Bumby  "piped  up  in  his  plainti  ft 
nine-year-old  voice  and  said:  'It's  quite  ;  I 
right,  Mrs.  M.,  I  am  not  hurt  and  Patri< 
isn't  either;  he's  just  frightened.'"  After  ; 
interview  at  the  local  police  station,  she  g  I  • 
the  children  home  in  time  for  supper  an  I 
trembling,  went  to  tell  Ernest  about  1  | 


m 


Hemingway 


continued  from  page  118  wagon.  In  one 
letter,  Ernest  recounted  how  he  was  tallying 
his  "score"  on  a  bottle  of  scotch  disappear- 
ing by  fourths  as  he  listened  to  a  Yale- 
Princeton  football  game  on  the  radio.  Final 
score:  Papa  4,  Scotland  0.  "This  letter  is 
handicapped  slightly,"  he  wrote,  "by  a  ten- 
dency to  dip  the  pen  in  the  highball  glass 
and  drink  the  ink." 

Far  away  from  Prohibition  in  the  States, 
Grant  would  stop  at  a  traffic  light  near  a 
particular  bar  on  his  way  home  from  the 
Pan  Am  office.  A  policeman  he  knew 
would  watch  the  car  while  Grant  popped 
out,  tossed  down  a  drink  the  bartender  had 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


made  when  he  saw  him  coming,  and 
hopped  back  into  his  car  before  the  light 
changed.  Leicester  Hemingway,  in  his  1961 
book  about  his  brother,  recounts  the  time 
that  "Ernest  and  Grant  got  an  entire  sub- 
urb of  Havana  cockeyed."  Ernest  and  his 
fishing  crew  dropped  in  to  Jaimanitas  unex- 
pectedly; Jane  was  away  and  Ernest  was  in 
a  bad  mood,  so  to  lubricate  an  awkward 
evening  Grant  broke  open  five  dozen  cases 
of  Castillon  cognac  salvaged  from  a  ship- 
wreck and  instructed  Ernest  in  " carbinacion' ': 
swishing  the  cognac  around  in  one's  mouth, 
then  inhaling  the  fine  mist  of  alcohol. 
Ernest  and  Grant  demonstrated  the  tech- 
nique to  the  neighborhood,  distributing  cas- 
es of  cognac  in  a  party  that  "lasted  two  sol- 
id days  and  into  a  third." 


JULY      19' 


Credit 


>'  "near  massacre."  In  her  account,  he 
sured  her,  "Well  they  have  got  to  have  a 
or  accident  sometime  in  their  life  and  I 
very  glad  they  started  with  you,  Mrs. 
Then,  her  spirits  "soaring,"  she  contin- 
on  to  a  large  diplomatic  dinner,  where 
recounted  the  story  of  the  accident  to 
imbassador,  who  laughed  at  it.  Furious, 
slapped  his  face. 

soon  became  clear  that  Jane  had  done 
tmething  to  her  back  in  the  accident, 
Grant  hired  a  battle-ax  of  a  nurse  to 
;  after  her.  According  to  Jane,  the  com- 
lds  of  "gaunt,  sex-starved"  Miss  Duffy, 
>etite  hurricane  of  forced  cheerfulness," 
w  the  whole  household  into  rebellion, 
four  servants  quit.  In  an  agitated  state, 
ain,  and  possibly  incorrectly  medicated, 
j  wrecked  her  back  further  by  jumping 
a  balcony  high  enough  to  be  "reason- 
impressive  as  an  effort  at  suicide  but 
high  enough  to  cause  death  or  serious 
ry,"  Grant  later  recalled.  He  added,  "I 
lot  think  the  accident  was  directly  relat- 

0  anything  currently  happening  with  Er- 
or  me  or  with  anyone  else."  Whether 

lot  Jane  was  in  any  kind  of  romantic 
noil  over  Hemingway,  the  strain  was  ag- 
'ated  by  her  being  nearly  responsible  for 
n  to  the  children.  Grant  chalked  it  up 
one  of  her  changeable  fits  of  elation  and 
ression"  and  thought  she  was  bidding 
attention.  "In  case  she  tried  another 

1  stunt,"  he  wrote,  "I  arranged  for  con- 
t  nurse  attendance  and  then  shipped 
to  New  York  on  a  Ward  Line  vessel 
i  special  bars  on  the  portholes." 
tumors  flew  that  she  had  been  shot  in 
back  by  a  revolutionary  or  had  jumped 
a  dare.  Ernest,  no  stranger  to  suicidal 
ulses,  believed  he  knew  the  truth.  "Can 

take  it?"  he  said  to  his  godson  years 
r.  "She  tried  to  take  her  life."  Earlier 

spring,  Hemingway  had  finished  "A 
/  You'll  Never  Be,"  a  story  he  said  he 
te  to  reassure  "a  hell  of  a  nice  girl  going 
'.y  from  day  to  day."  According  to  biog- 
ler  Carlos  Baker,  Hemingway  implied 

Jane's  instability  "arose  from  a  frustrat- 
ove  for  himself."  Hemingway  reportedly 
e  made  the  crude  crack  to  the  writer 
n  Dos  Passos  that  Jane  was  the  girl 
)  fell  for  him  literally. 
Vt  the  time,  however,  Ernest's  sympathies 
e  with  Jane.  He  blamed  Grant  for  ne- 
;ting  her,  but  he  also  blamed  Jane  for 
ig  married  to  Grant.  As  he  wrote  to 
hibald  MacLeish,  "All  women  married 
l  wrong  husband  are  bad  luck  for  them- 
es and  all  their  friends,  c.f.  Mr.  Bench- 
>  pal  and  Mrs.  Parker's  confidante.  Mr. 
is  a  man  of  great  wealth  and  will  have 
re  none  ever  as  yet  having  been  spent. 
>ple  seem  to  put  up  longer  with  a  rich 
i  a  poor  twirp.  Also  people  put  up  with 


Fashion 


Cover:  Will  Smith's  Tommy  Hilfiger  Collection  leather 
shirt  by  special  order  from  Tommy  Hilfiger,  Beverly  Hills, 
Gucci  |eans  from  Barneys  New  York,  NYC;  for  Justin 
boots,  call  800-3JUSTIN. 
Page  8:  See  credit  for  pages  92-93. 
Page  22:  Bottom,  Hermes  coat  from  Hermes  bou- 
tiques nationwide;  Tommy  Hilfiger  Collection  leather 
shirt  and  pants  by  special  order  from  Tommy  Hil- 
figer, Beverly  Hills,  Brown  Beauty  Stetson  hat  from 
Cavender's  Boot  City,  Dallas;  for  Justin  boots,  call 
800-3JUSTIN; 

Page  26:  Chris  Garrett  styled  by  Kimberly  Debus 
for  Jam  Arts. 

Page  71:  Piper  Perabo's  Versace  shirt  and  skirt 
from  Versace  boutiques  nationwide. 
Page  72:  Top,  styled  by  Jennie  Lopez;  Scott  Kann- 
berg's  sweater  by  John  Bartlett,  from  selected  Saks 
Fifth  Avenue  stores;  Mark  Ibold's  blazer  by  Dolce 
&  Gabbana,  from  Saks  Fifth  Avenue,  NYC  ,  Bob 
Nastanovich's  shirt  by  John  Bartlett,  from  selected 
Barneys  New  York  stores,  Stephen  Malkmus's  blazer 
by  Dolce  &  Gabbana,  from  Barneys  New  York, 
NYC  Yefim  Shubentsov  styled  by  Tina  Skouras; 
Ermengildo  Zegna  sweater  from  the  Ermengildo  Zegna 
boutique,  NYC. 

Page  74:  Ben  Stiller  styled  by  Kevin  Robinson;  jacket 
by  Prada,  from  Prada  boutiques  nationwide;  sweater 
by  Marc  Jacobs,  from  Marc  Jacobs,  NYC 
Page  87:  Ralph  Lauren  Home  Collection  sheets 
from  Polo  Ralph  Lauren,  NYC. 
Pages  88-89:  Will  Smith's  Tommy  Hilfiger  Collec- 
tion leather  shirt  by  special  order  from  Tommy  Hilfiger, 
Beverly  Hills;  Tommy  Hilfiger  Athletics  T-shirt  from 
Macy's  stores  nationwide,  Gucci  jeans  from  Barneys 
New  York,  NYC;  for  Justin  boots,  call  800-3JUSTIN. 
Page  91:  Prada  top  and  pants  from  Prada,  NYC; 
Brown  Beauty  Stetson  hat  from  Cavender's  Boot  City, 
Dallas. 

Pages  92-93:  Gucci  shirt  and  jeans  from  Barneys 
New  York,  NYC 

Pages  102-5:  Costume  design  assisted  by  Anna  Kot, 
Page  121:  For  Jack  Nicklaus's  Jack  Nicklaus  Golf 
Apparel  shirt  and  shorts,  call  800-776-7268. 
Page  123:  Byron  Nelson's  Nautica  Golf  by  David 
Chu  shirt  and  pants  from  selected  Macy's  stores. 
Page  124:  Ernie  Els's  Alfred  Dunhill  sweater  from 
Dunhill  Golf  by  Alfred  Dunhill,  NYC;  for  Adidas 
Golf  shirt  and  pants,  call  888-765-4054.  For  Lee 
Westwood's  Lyle  &  Scott  turtleneck  and  pants,  call 
01  1-44-145-037-3361.  For  LaCrosse  Footwear  Wel- 
lingtons, call  800-671 -BOOT, 
Page  1 27:  For  Nancy  Lopez's  Izod  Club  shirt,  sweater, 
and  pants,  call  800-522-6783;  for  FootJoy  shoes, 
call  800-225-8500.  For  Se  Ri  Pak's  LizGolf  by  Liz 
Claiborne  vest,  call  800-555-9838;  for  Lacoste  shirt 
and  pants,  call  800-4-LACOSTE;  Brooks  Brothers 
socks  from  Brooks  Brothers,  NYC;  for  Nike  shoes, 
call  800-352-NIKE. 

Page  128:  Phil  Mickelson's  Hugo  Boss  shirt,  pants, 
and  belt  from  the  Boss  Hugo  Boss  boutique,  Short 
Hills,  N.J.;  for  Rolex  watch,  call  800-36-ROLEX. 
David  Duval's  Tommy  Hilfiger  sweater,  T-shirt,  and 
pants  from  Tommy  Hilfiger,  Beverly  Hills. 
Page  129:  Justin  Leonard's  Polo  Golf  by  Ralph 
Lauren  shirt,  vest,  pants,  and  hat  from  selected  Polo  Sport 
stores;  Ray-Ban  sunglasses  from  Sunglass  Hut  stores 
nationwide;  Ebel  watch  from  selected  Neiman  Marcus 
stores.  Jim  Furyk's  Johnnie  Walker  shirt,  sweater,  pants, 
and  cap  exclusively  from  selected  Bloomingdale's  stores. 

Beauty  and  Grooming 

Page  26:  Chris  Garrett's  hair  and  makeup  by  G'ta 

Bass  for  Susan  Prince,  Inc. 

Page  46:  Congressman  Jerry  Nadler's  grooming 

by  Kat  James  for  Garren  New  York. 

Page  71:  Piper  Perabo's  hair  styled  with  Paul  Mitchell 

the  Shine.  All  makeup  from  Elizabeth  Arden.  On  her 

eyes,  Eyeshadow  Duo  in  Metro/Twilight;  on  her  face, 

SmartWear  Makeup  S.P.F.  15  in  Cream.  Campbell  for 

Profile;  Mailal  Sabban  for  Artists. 

Page  72:  Pavement's  members'  hair  by  Antonio 


Prieto  for  the  Antonio  Prieto  Salon;  grooming  by  Renata 

Helfman   Yefim  Shubentsov's  grooming  by  Tatijana 

Shoan. 

Page  74:  Janeane  Garofalo's  hair  and  makeup  by 

Tatijana  Shoan,  Ben  Stiller's  grooming  by  John  Caruso 

for  Garren  New  York. 

Page  87:  Howard  Fugler  for  the  Agency;  Kay  Mon- 

tano  for  Chantecaille. 

Pages  94-100:  Tom  Ford's,  Domenico  De  Sole's, 

and  Michael  Zaoui's  grooming  by  Mira  for  Public. 

Pages  104-5:  Hair  by  Lisa  Pickering,  Muriel  Bell, 

Catharyne  Le  Blanc,  and  Mark  English;  makeup  by 

Marilyn  MacDonald;  makeup  assistance  by  Deborah 

Jarvis  and  Miri  Ben-Shlomo, 

Pages    121-29:  Jack  Nicklaus's,  Gary  Player's, 

Byron  Nelson's,  Ernie  Els's,  Lee  Westwood's,  Gene 

Sarazen's,  Phil  Mickelson's,  David  Duval's,  Justin 

Leonard's,  and  Jim  Furyk's  grooming  and  Patty  Berg's 

hair  and  makeup  all  by  Lori  Guidroz  for  the  Rex  Agency. 

Page  127:  Lori  Guidroz  for  the  Rex  Agency. 

Pages  131  and  133:  Sam  Snead's  and  Arnold 

Palmer's  grooming  by  Karen  Panoch  for  Artists  by 

Timothy  Priano. 

Photographs  and  Miscellany 

Cover:  Rick  Floyd  for  Smashbox  NYC. 
Page  12:  All,  courtesy  of  Antony  Mason;  ©  by  the 
Ernest  Hemingway  Foundation  and  John,  Patrick,  and 
Gregory  Hemingway;  copy  work  by  Eileen  Travell. 
Pages  48-52:  All,  courtesy  of  Universal  Studios. 
Page  56:  Both  from  Globe  Photos. 
Page  62:  Top,  from  Globe  Photos. 
Page  66:  All  from  Photofest. 
Page  72:  Bottom  right,  by  Nigel  Parry/CPI. 
Pages  78-79:  From  Sygma. 
Pages  80-81:  From  Reuters/Archive  Photos. 
Pages  84-85:  From  Sipa  Press. 
Pages  88-89:  Horse  from  Arizona  Stunt  Spe- 
cialties, Scottsdale. 
Page  98:  From  Sipa  Press. 

Page  108:  From  the  Ernest  Hemingway  Collection/ 
John  F.  Kennedy  Library,  Boston. 
Page  109:  Large  photograph  courtesy  of  Antony 
Mason;  copy  work  by  Eileen  Travell.  Inset,  ©  by 
Scribners,  from  the  Ernest  Hemingway  Collection/ 
John  F.  Kennedy  Library,  Boston;  copy  work  by  Allan 
Goodrich. 

Page  1 10:  From  the  Ernest  Hemingway  Collection/ 
John  F.  Kennedy  Library,  Boston. 
Page  111:  Courtesy  of  Antony  Mason;  ©  by  the 
Ernest  Hemingway  Foundation  and  John,  Patrick,  and 
Gregory  Hemingway;  copy  work  by  Eileen  Travell. 
Pages  112-13:  Large  photograph  and  inset,  bottom, 
from  the  Ernest  Hemingway  Collection/John  F  Kennedy 
Library,  Boston;  inset,  top,  ©  1937  by  Time  Inc. 
Page   1 14:  All,  courtesy  of  Antony  Mason;  copy 
work  by  Eileen  Travell. 

Page  115:  From  the  Ernest  Hemingway  Collection/ 
John  F.  Kennedy  Library,  Boston. 
Page  1 16:  Top  left,  from  the  Kobal  Collection.  All 
others  courtesy  of  Antony  Mason;  copy  work  by 
Eileen  Travell.  Bottom  right,  ©  by  the  Ernest  Heming- 
way Foundation  and  John,  Patrick,  and  Gregory 
Hemingway. 

Page  117:  Top  left  and  top  right,  courtesy  of  Antony 
Mason;  copy  work  by  Eileen  Travell  Center,  from  the 
Prints  and  Photographs  Division,  Library  of  Congress, 
Washington,  DC;  courtesy  of  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery,  from  the  exhibition  "Picturing  Hemingway:  A 
Writer  in  His  Time."  Bottom,  from  Photofest. 
Pages  120-33:  Production  by  Kristen  Kish  for  Pic- 
torial Productions. 
Page  139:  From  Reuters/MAXPPR 

Editor's  note:  In  the  June  issue,  a  credit  for  pages 
1 8  2-8  3  was  inadvertently  omitted.  Ricky  Martin's  hair 
was  styled  by  Max  Pinnell  for  Bumble  and  Bumble. 

Also  in  the  June  issue,  on  page  202,  the  sculpture 
in  the  photo  of  Barbara  Sinatra  is  by  John  Kennedy, 
it  was  donated  by  David  and  Connie  Katz  of  the 
Coda  Gallery. 


VANITY     FAIR 


Hemingwaj 


oui  understandings. ...  I 

in  jhorl  story  about  it  by 

pi  ing  Mrs.  M  wanted  to  many 

•     in  th<    spring  of  1933  she 

brola  het  back   I  bat's  a  little  too  simple  too." 

While  Pauline  wrote  cheery  notes  to  the 
hospital,  Ernest  took  Jane's  pain  per- 
sonally, as  if  he  were  partly  responsible  for 
it:  "I  feel  so  terribly  damned  bad  about 
them  having  to  operate  on  your  back  that  I 
cant  write  you,"  he  said  in  one  letter.  And, 
later,  "It's  too  damned  awful.  ...  As  ex- 
plained once  feel  too  bad  about  you  to  write 
to  you.  What  can  you  say  to  the  troops. 
Nothing."  Even  his  wisecracks  sounded 
strained,  like  the  one  about  the  new  maga- 
zine he  was  writing  for,  "called  of  all  lousy 
titles  Esquire.  Esquire  my  derrier.  My  deni- 
er, Esq."  When  he  wasn't  calling  Jane 
"Janie"  or  "Daughter"— as  he  called  many 
younger  women  he  was  fond  of— he  ad- 
dressed her  as  "Madame."  In  a  postscript 
to  one  of  Pauline's  letters,  there  is  a  drawn 
face  labeled  "Monsieur  Kiss." 

He  assured  Jane  that  he  thought  of  her 
"very  often  (some  of  every  day)."  In  a 
burst  of  sympathy  with  her  daredevil  char- 
acter and  recent  trauma,  he  wrote,  "So 
how  are  you  you  poor  bloody  Diving  Con- 
test Winner  take  Nothing?"  (About  the 
same  time,  he  wrote  his  editor  Maxwell 
Perkins  that  he  had  finally  found  the  title 
for  his  new  collection  of  stories:  Winner 
Take  Nothing. )  Pauline,  meanwhile,  let  Jane 
know  that  she  did  not  discuss  with  Ernest 
whatever  might  have  led  Jane  to  the  bal- 
cony: "While  I  think  of  it,  neither  Ernest 
nor  I  have  ever  mentioned  the  fall— only 
the  fruit  thereof." 

In  Doctors'  Hospital  in  New  York,  Jane 
had  Tallulah  Bankhead  for  a  neighbor,  at 
least  one  visit  from  Dorothy  Parker,  and  a 
few  from  MacLeish,  who  came  at  Ernest's 
bidding  and  reported  back  that  there  were 
no  close  relatives  around  when  Jane  made 
decisions  about  her  surgery.  Archie  was 
"upset"  by  this,  Ernest  wrote  Jane,  but 
more  likely  it  was  Ernest  who  was  upset. 
He  ended  up  communicating  with  Jane's 
doctor  directly. 

As  her  months  in  the  hospital  wore  on, 
Jane  wrote  the  Hemingways  that  she  was 
being  kept  company  by  a  tiny  green  Brazil- 
ian monkey  (sent  by  Grant),  two  white 
mice,  and  an  excellent  bottle  of  sherry.  Her 
pets  made  the  New  York  society  columns: 
hospital  interns  were  humiliated  at  having 
to  give  sunlamp  treatments  to  a  rich  pa- 
tient's monkey,  and  when  Jane  complained 
that  her  mice,  Samson  and  Delilah,  didn't 
hit  it  off  in  an  amorous  way,  a  celebrated 
specialist  was  overheard  to  say:  "My  dear 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


woman. . . .  You  ought  to  realize  that  mice 
are  not  like  some  people  we  know.  Mice 
have  to  get  acquainted."  Ultimately  a  third 
mouse,  named  Gigolo,  was  brought  on  the 

scene. 

From  her  hospital  bed,  Jane  helped 
Hemingway  plan  a  safari  with  Pauline 
in  Africa.  Ernest  wrote  with  boyish  enthusi- 
asm: "Would  like  to  ask  D.C.  [Dick  Coop- 
er] about  taking  guns  out.  I  can't  take  my 
rifles  through  Cuba  and  Spain. . . .  Would 
rather  have  something  can  hit  with  and  am 
familiar  with  than  more  powerful  double  ri- 
fle wouldn't  be  used  to.  Maybe  wrong. . . . 
But  an  old  pal.  Hall  Smith,  killed  elephants 
for  ivory  for  money  with  this  Mauser  and 
liked  it  on  them."  Jane  cabled  back  with 
detailed  counsel  from  Cooper:  ship  with 

RIFLES  SIXTY  ROUNDS  THIRTY  06  OF  220 
GRAINS  BULLET  FOR  ELEPHANT  OR  RHINO. 
ONLY  USE  220  GRAIN  BULLET  OTHERWISE 
WRONG  BULLET  RIGHT  MOMENT. 

By  the  time  the  Hemingways  left  for 
Spain  at  the  end  of  the  summer,  with  plans 
to  move  on  to  Africa  later  in  the  fall,  there 
was  political  unrest  in  Cuba.  Ernest  was 
fired  up  to  write  the  first  of  the  Harry  Mor- 
gan stories— the  backbone  of  To  Have  and 
Have  Not— and  reported  to  Jane  in  a  long 
letter  from  Madrid  that  he'd  just  finished  a 
15,000-word  story  set  in  Cuba,  assuring 
her,  "No  you're  not  in  it  Madame." 

Felt  pretty  bad  about  some  things  about  Ha- 

bana Thought  maybe  they  had  burned 

your  house  or  looted  your  husband  and  that 
it  was  sort  of  like  the  Civil  War.  You  know 
me  in  blue  meeting  you,  my  brother,  in  Grey 
on  the  battlefield  of  Antietam  and  regretting 
heartily  having  just  shot  you  in  the  back  as 
you  ran.  Those  rebels  always  run  like  hell 
both  ways,  my  Granddad  said. 

You  know.  Felt  very  much  un-I  told  you 
so.  Politically. 

So  now  write  humbly.  Wish  could  see  you 
instead.  I'm  always  right  on  politics  and  for- 
eign exchange.  It's  no  great  comfort. 

Jane  wrote  back  peevishly,  knowing  that 
she  was  indeed  missing  out  on  all  the  ac- 
tion, and  trying  to  make  a  nasty  kind  of  su- 
perior virtue  of  it:  "All  my  windows  give  on 
other  apartments  and  I  can  really  say  I'm 
getting  a  liberal  education  on  the  matter  of 
how  the  other  half  lives,  personally  I'd 
rather  not  have  to  know.  ...  As  for  the 
rebels  being  shot  in  the  back  . . .  don't  go 
feeling  in  any  way  upset  over  it.  It's  their 
revolution  and  I  guess  they  have  to  get  it 
out  of  their  system."  Meanwhile,  Grant  had 
arranged  to  get  President  Gerardo  Macha- 
do  and  his  retinue  out  of  Cuba  on  a  Pan 
Am  plane. 

By  November,  Jane  was  back  on  her  feet, 
fitted  with  a  back  brace  she  called  her  "iron 
virgin."  Her  doctors  considered  it  too  dan- 
gerous for  her  to  return  to  Cuba.  Soon  the 


Hemingways  were  on  safari,  enjoying,       ' 
Pauline  wrote,  the  people  accompanyii  I'" 
them,  skilled  white  hunters  Philip  Perch  *" 
and  "your  friend  Dick  Cooper's  friei  few 
[Bror]  von  Blixen.  Your  friend  Mr.  Coop  t& 
is  extremely  well  spoken  of  in  these  par  pit 
Haven't  been  able  to  find  out  anything  lou 
about  him  at  all."  Confined  to  New  Yoi  i  J 
Jane  had  fewer  adventures,  and  those  we  i 
mostly  social.  She  hoped  for  an  exhibitit  &< 
of  her  sculpture  at  the  Knoedler  gallery,  b  j 
she  had  left  much  of  her  work  unfinishe  Ufa 
She  continued  her  art  studies  with  Isan 
Noguchi,  made  the  season's  round  of  chi  I  : 
ity  costume  balls,  and  found  her  "frs  p 
blonde  beauty"  described  as  "positive  tac 
lyric"  in  Hearst's  Sunday  American— "S  m 
seemed  a  beauty  made  in  Venetian  glass."  b: 

::: 

Jane  was  also  undergoing  an  intensi  • 
course  of  what  she  called  "psycrj  Is  it 
paralyzing"  with  Dr.  Lawrence  Kubie,  a  N(  • 
York  analyst.  "Nothing  like  it,"  she  wrc  1-1 
the  Hemingways,  "for  breaking  down  ai  m 
slight  ray  of  ego  which  might  have  once  ;.'  Si 
lumined  an  otherwise  modest  life."  Accoi  m 
ing  to  Jane,  Kubie  later  said  that  she  w  it 
the  only  patient  he'd  ever  treated  whom  1  fo, 
couldn't  help.  But  she  took  psychoanalys  u» 
seriously,  and  tried  to  believe  it  was  helpij  b  t 
her,  just  as  she  tried  to  believe  that  her  hi  1 1 
band's  love  was  everything  she  wanted  it  Ru 
be.  She  wrote  to  Grant  in  the  affectiona  i»! 
baby  talk  they  used  with  each  other,  "K  si  if 
bie  and  I  are  coming  along  beautifully  ai  M 
your  little  half  wit  is  feeling  more  and  mo  it  i 
competent  to  deal  with  this  here  busine  if,;, 

of  living I  hope  you  and  kwee  [an  in  L 

mate  anatomical  reference]  miss  us  a  liti  (  n 
for  we  miss  you  terribly." 

Early  in  Jane's  marriage,  her  mother  hi  1 1, 
written  Grant  a  letter  of  warning:  "She  M 
hungry  for  affection,  and  love,  and  if  y<  L 
don't  give  your  best  to  her,  some  day  s  L 

will  find  some  one  that  will Try  and  1  L| 

yourself  go  and  be  intense  in  your  emotio  L 
with  her,  remember  sex  is  a  very  vital  ai  L 
important  issue."  In  the  end,  Grant  m  h 
have  liked  looking  at  Jane  more  than  ai  L 
thing  else.  She  had  once  sent  him  fro  m 
London  a  book  of  paintings  of  nakt  L 
women,  which  he  hoped  was  a  joke  as  ,  L 
rushed  to  assure  her  that  on  her  return  ',  y 
"and  kwee"  would  show  her  "how  norrr.  „,« 
we  are  and  how  much  we  love  you."  Nc  1 
she  wrote  to  him,  "Though  I  haven't  d  L 
cussed  the  matter  with  Kubie  at  any  gre  L 
length,  I  can't  see  any  harm  in  your  'mc  u 
ies'  of  me,  since  they  could  hardly  be  t  , 
pected  to  rouse  the  heart  in  anyone." 

She  probably  came  to  miss  Grant  lc  | 
over  the  next  several  months  as  she  spe  L 
much  of  her  time  in  the  company  of  Di  | 
Cooper.  Rumors  that  she  was  leaving  h  k, 
husband,  that  "among  the  many  beau  L 
surrounding  her  there  was  "one  who  is  t  m 

JULY      19'. 


mingway 


favored,"  made  the  columns.  The  ru- 
were  denied,  but  the  night  after  she 
ied  to  Havana,  Jane  got  blind  drunk. 

it  summer  of  1934,  Hemingway  made 
s  annual  migration  to  Havana  to  fish 
irlin  and  spent  three  months  enjoying 
w  boat,  the  Pilar,  mostly  without  Pau- 
A.  friend  of  Leicester  Hemingway's 
that  around  this  time  Ernest  was 
;ht  playing  hanky-panky,"  and  that 
ie  came  "rushing  over  here  to  protect 
iterests."  Yet  Pauline  and  Jane  still 
each  other  warmly. 
Ernest's  one  letter  to  Jane  that  year, 
n  at  the  end  of  the  summer  when  she 
1  New  York,  he  speaks  about  missing 
Is  there  any  chance  you  are  coming 
Or  when?  ...  I  wanted  to  shake  dice 
it— Is  that  practical?  Shakem  awfully 
dice  for  money,  travel,  adventure,  or 
."  It  is  an  ambiguous,  tentative  letter, 
ich  he  encourages  Jane  in  her  writing, 
test  channel  for  her  artistic  energy.  He 
bes  a  dream  window  on  his  own  writ- 
lxiety:  "Woke  up  at  2  a.m.  day  before 
day  to  find  myself  sitting  up  in  bed 
g.  Experiment  in  a  hoarse  voice— In 
"earn  it  was  part  of  an  arithmetic  test 
ool."  As  an  afterthought,  he  squeezes 
en  the  lines  that  the  last  time  he  saw 
ie  she  was  "looking  lovely." 
ie  would  have  had  to  be  pretty  cold- 
ed  to  carry  on  with  the  husband  of 
me  writing  to  her  as  "sweet  Jane"  and 
;  my  pearl."  But  the  Venetian-glass 
y  did  not  lack  for  sangfroid.  Some- 
!  along  the  line  Jane  had  become  a 
in  who  could  write  in  her  diary  of  one 
r  lovers,  "I  have  given  him  the  small 
us  which  was  necessary  to  make  him 
imself  a  man.  It  cost  me  little. ...  A 
ours  of  mental  disturbance  caused  by 
datory  basic  physical  desire.  A  few 
;nts  of  disappointment.  Mild  disap- 
ment. ...  He  has  not  as  yet  come  to 
really  anything  to  me.  He  is  still  un- 
iered  undominated  and  therefore  an 
sting  problem." 

September  1934,  Jane  wrote  to  her 
ngs"  the  Hemingways  to  let  Ernest 
that  she  had  put  in  an  order  for  first 
•ns  of  his  books  and  wanted  him  to 
:hem.  She  also  wanted  to  know  if  he 
eady  to  immortalize  her  in  his  work: 
e  you  (or  are  you  really  going  to)  start- 
piece  about  the  strange  case  of  Mrs. 
She  was  afraid  of  angering  him,  but 
I  of  something  else  too,  something 
#as  "haunting"  her  in  the  night,  hav- 
>  do  with  what  he  might  write  and  the 
ry  obviousness"  of  it. 
it  Hemingway  wasn't  one  to  shy  away 


from  obviousness.  In  a  section  later  cut 
from  To  Have  and  Have  Not,  he  wrote: 

Richard  Gordon  did  not  know  that  Mrs.  Brad- 
ley ordered  all  the  books  of  any  writer  who 
arrived  in  Key  West  . . .  sometimes  at  consid- 
erable expense  in  the  early  editions.  But  Mrs. 
Bradley  never  minded  the  expense  because  a 
signed  copy  was  worth  more  than  an  ordinary 
one  and  Mrs.  Bradley's  authors  always  signed. 
Usually  they  added  something  that  made  the 
book  a  worthwhile  item  and  Mrs.  Bradley 
kept  these  all  upstairs  in  a  glass  case. 

Meanwhile,  Dr.  Kubie  was  doing  his 
own  analysis  of  the  novelist.  In  an  ar- 
ticle he  submitted  to  Tfie  Saturday  Review 
of  Literature,  he  said  that  in  Hemingway's 
work  "real  men"  are  "lusty,  hard-living  fel- 
lows, who  must  exhibit  their  prowess  inces- 
santly lest  they  forget  they  have  it,  and  who 
drink  noisily  to  hide  from  fear  and  depres- 
sion." When  Jane  saw  the  essay,  she  pan- 
icked, drafting  and  redrafting  desperate  ca- 
bles to  Archibald  MacLeish  at  his  office  at 
Fortune:  if  necessary  please  save  my  skin 

BY  DENYING  TO  ERNEST  MY  PERSONAL  AC- 
QUAINTANCE DR.  KUBIE  STORM  BREWING. 

After  calling  his  contact  at  Tlie  Saturday 
Review,  MacLeish  wrote  Jane  to  reassure  her: 
"Your  only  mistake  aside  from  your  original 
mistake  in  letting  the  little  kike  psychoana- 
lyze you  (you  remember  I  warned  you)  has 
been  in  knowing  too  much  about  what  he 
was  up  to. . . .  I  have  already  taken  steps 
which  will  prevent  the  publication  of  the  ar- 
ticle in  the  Sat.  Rev.  and  will,  if  you  notify 
me  that  he  intends  to  go  on  trying,  take  steps 
to  see  that  he  never  publishes  it  anywhere." 

Kubie  received  a  letter  from  Hemingway 
threatening  legal  action.  At  first  he  thought  it 
had  been  written  by  his  patient,  for  he  found 
their  handwriting  "amazingly"  similar.  He 
protested  that  he  remembered  little  about 
Hemingway  from  his  conversations  with  Jane 
other  than  "a  few  physical  characteristics" 
and  "bits  about  his  fishing."  Jane  spilled  the 
whole  story  to  Ernest,  and  then  wrote  to  Ku- 
bie, "Stars  fell  on  Alabama  all  right  all  right!! 
When  he  had  more  or  less  calmed  down  I 
explained  that  I  really  hadn't  given  you  in- 
side information But  nothing  would  con- 
vince him  that  I  hadn't  spent  ten  months 
talking  exclusively  of  him." 

Given  Hemingway's  fame,  Jane  may  well 
have  hidden  any  erotic  experiment  with  him 
even  from  her  shrink— which  would  account 
both  for  her  panic  when  she  saw  the  sexual 
innuendo  in  Kubie's  article  and  for  Kubie's 
surprise  that  he  was  suspected  of  any  "un- 
cricket-like  dealings."  At  the  same  time,  the 
idea  that  a  beautiful  woman  who  was  not,  in 
fact,  "whoring"  might  have  slept  with  him 
and  yet  not  be  in  love  with  him  could  have 
disturbed  Hemingway,  disturbed  him  enough 
to  inspire  his  sharp-edged  portrayals  of  the 
sexual  adventuresses  Margot  Macomber  and 
Helene  Bradley.  (In  an  unpublished  section 


of  To  Have  and  Have  Not,  Hemingway  even 
has  Tommy  Bradley  try  out  the  idea  that 
his  wife  is  given  money  for  her  services, 
adding,  "She's  a  very  romantic  girl.") 

Jane  probably  did  devote  little  time  to 
Ernest  in  her  sessions  with  Kubie,  emotion- 
ally preoccupied  as  she  was  at  that  point 
with  the  question  of  whether  to  leave  her 
husband— whom  she  now  referred  to  in  let- 
ters to  the  Hemingways  as  "Spouse  Ltd."— 
for  Dick  Cooper.  She'd  finally  made  her 
own  trip  to  Africa,  spent  time  on  Cooper's 
farm,  and  gone  out  on  safari,  where  "be- 
sides bringing  down  several  lions  and  ti- 
gers," as  one  society  column  reported,  she 
"shot  one  of  the  few  white  zebras  in  exis- 
tence." The  zebra's  foal  was  shot,  too,  and 
sent  to  England  to  be  made  into  a  rocking 
horse  for  Jane's  two  boys.  (She  had  adopt- 
ed a  second  child,  Philip.)  MacLeish  wrote 
to  Hemingway  that  he  had  seen  Jane  in 
London  on  her  way  back  from  Africa,  "& 
the  Prince  of  Wales  had  her  in  for  dinner 
&  she  tried  to  fix  it  up  for  me  to  meet  the 
Prince  ...  &  he  said  he  wouldn't  meet  me 
socially."  He  also  reported  that  Jane  had 
been  accompanied  on  safari  by  14  men. 

When  Jane  returned  to  Havana,  she  wrote 
to  Kubie  that  Cooper  wanted  her  to  "begin 
thinking  really  seriously  about  marriage"  be- 
cause he  was  expecting  his  oil  well  to  pro- 
vide a  gusher  "well  up  in  the  millions."  In 
a  letter  to  the  Hemingways,  she  said  that 
Cooper  had  sent  her  a  new  shotgun  "so 
beaut-ifull  that  I'm  like  an  infant  about  it. 
And  have  to  break  nails,  and  sit  crooning 
over  it  every  few  minutes."  She  confided  that 
her  "Mr.  C"  deserved  a  break  regardless  of 
their  future  as  a  couple.  But  Cooper,  for 
some  reason,  backed  away  from  her. 

In  a  play  called  Safari,  Jane  created  a  wom- 
an named  April  who  wants  to  marry  a 
Captain  Philip  Mitchell  and  live  on  his  farm 
in  Africa  but  is  afraid  to  leave  her  safe  social 
position.  Among  the  other  characters  are  a 
weak  young  man  being  dragged  around  Af- 
rica "to  put  some  guts  into  him,"  a  dopey 
girl  whose  favorite  author  is  Ernest  Heming- 
way, and  a  hunter  modeled  on  Baron  Bror 
von  Blixen-Finecke— whose  first  wife,  Karen, 
wrote  under  the  pseudonym  Isak  Dinesen. 
(Jane  was  probably  inspired  to  try  playwrit- 
ing  by  her  friend  Clare  Boothe  Luce,  who 
spent  her  honeymoon  with  Henry  in  Decem- 
ber 1935  at  the  Mason  house  in  Jaimanitas.) 
For  Jane,  to  return  from  Africa  to  Ha- 
vana and  the  roles  of  wife  and  mother  was 
to  "revert  to  the  ancient  role  of  amoeba 
(you  know  those  little  creatures  who  go  on 
dividing  and  sub-dividing  themselves  indef- 
initely)," she  wrote  to  an  unnamed  friend 
or  lover.  Home  again,  she  felt  herself  "suc- 
cumbing to  the  local  brand  of  poison  . .  . 
turning  me  slowly  into  a  cow."  Admitting 
that  "sometimes  ...  I  look  on  my  own  fem- 


VANITY     FAIR 


II 


rmi 


ngvvaj 


desc  ribed  bersell 

\o\  ing    pi ed  dow  o  to  .i 

femi  line  carcass " 
otinui  d  to  find  relief  in  the  corapa- 
mingways,  who  united  her  to 
join  (hem  foi  partying  and  fishing  on  Bim- 
iin  Broi  Blixen  was  there,  and  Arnold  Gin- 
grich, the  editoi  of  Esquire,  dropped  in.  As 
Gingrich  pul  it.  he  found  Jane  securely  en- 
sconced as  "a  member  in  high  standing  of 
the  Hemingway  camp,"  and  fiercely  loyal. 
When  Gingrich  began  pontificating  on  the 
literary  virtues  of  E  Scott  Fitzgerald,  she 
scolded  him:  "We  don't  say  things  like  that 
around  here." 

Soon  Gingrich  and  Jane  began  arranging 
rendezvous  in  New  York.  Jane  wrote  him  a 
"letter  to  the  editor"  at  Esquire  using  a  pseu- 
donym  and  a  playful  numerical  code:  "4ever 
th9  ©tentive  &  arlO  Reader."  He  responded 
(in  a  letter  typed  and  signed  by  his  secretary) 
with  **priv8  D  lite"  and  "a  n-vi-ta-shun  2  cum 
laude  &  lusTlee  over  2  R  house  agane."  At 
some  point  Jane  scrawled,  but  probably 
didn't  send,  a  telegram  to  the  Hemingways: 

MISSING  YOU  BETWEEN  REELS  STOP  GO  FU- 
TURE UNLIKELY  PAST  IMPROBABLE.  OUR  PRES- 
ENT LOVE  OR  IS  THIS  TOO  TENSE.  REPLY  UR- 
GENT EDITORO  AND  THIEF  YOUR  MAGAZINE. 
On  the  same  page,  she  drafted  one  to  Grant 
in  Miami:  PLEASE  COME  HOME  ALL  IS  FOR- 
GIVEN WILL  GIVE  YOU  FIGHTING  CHANCE. 
CONGRATULATIONS  YOUR  TWO  VOTES  AHEAD 
POPULARITY  CONTEST. 

Hemingway  had  encouraged  Jane  in  her 
writing  before  she  left  for  Africa,  but 
now  he  warned  her  it  was  "a  tough  racket." 
He  told  her  that  Gingrich's  book,  which  he'd 
sent  Hemingway  so  proudly,  was  terrible. 
Jane  may  still  have  sent  him,  or  wanted  to 
send  him,  her  play.  Safari,  because  at  about 
this  time  Pauline's  sister.  Jinny  PfeifTer,  wrote 
her:  "Mr.  H  seems  to  be  in  a  deadly  state  of 
condemning  manuscripts.  So  Mrs.  Mason 
beware."  Jane  had  recently  had  a  short  story 
rejected  by  The  New  Yorker,  and  told  Hem- 
ingway, "I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  wait  until 
I  am  (if  ever)  better  known  and  then  get 
it  published.  No  insult  to  you  intended." 
Hemingway  himself,  "full  of  all  the  juice 
in  the  world  to  write"  but  procrastinating, 
was  on  the  verge  of  producing  some  of  his 
best  work.  In  Green  Hills  of  Africa,  he  had 
made  passing  mention  of  a  woman  named 
Margot,  the  definition  of  "a  beautiful  wom- 
an." Now,  in  "The  Short  Happy  Life  of 
Francis  Macomber,"  he  made  Margot  the 
heroine,  or  antiheroine,  of  her  own  story: 

When  she  left,  Wilson  was  thinking,  when 
she  went  off  to  cry,  she  seemed  a  hell  of  a 
fine  woman.  She  seemed  to  understand,  to  re- 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


alize,  to  be  Ihmi  liu  him  and  for  herself  and  to 
know  how  things  reallj  stood,  she  is  away  tor 
twenty  minutes  and  now  she  is  hack,  simply 
enamelled  in  thai  American  female  cruelty. 

Hemingway  also  drew  on  his  impressions 
of  Grant  in  creating  Francis  Macomber, 
who.  like  Grant,  knows  about  fishing  and 
motorcycles.  Macomber  also  knows  "about 
sex  in  books"  and  has  "a  great  tolerance 
which  seemed  the  nicest  thing  about  him  if 
it  were  not  the  most  sinister." 

"The  strange  case  of"  Mrs.  M"  preoccu- 
pied Hemingway  creatively  through  much 
of  1936.  In  April  he  finished  a  draft  of 
"The  Short  Happy  Life  of  Francis  Ma- 
comber," along  with  "The  Snows  of  Kili- 
manjaro" (in  which  biographers  see  the 
signs  of  the  breakup  of  his  marriage  to 
Pauline).  He  also  wrote  Dos  Passos  that 
Jane  would  be  joining  him  and  his  buddy 
Josie  Russell  on  the  Pilar  for  a  night  cross- 
ing to  Havana.  "Mrs.  Mason  is  almost  as 
apt  at  going  places  without  her  husband  as 
Mr.  Josie  is  without  his  wife.  But  then  Mrs. 
Mason  has  also  had  her  husband  for  a  long 
time  too  although  Mr.  Josie  I  believe  there 
is  no  doubt  has  had  his  much  oftener  as 
well  as  longer  than  Mr.  Mason."  Once  they 
arrived  in  Havana,  there  was  a  swank  party 
at  the  Mason  home  in  Jaimanitas  which 
included  John  and  Katy  Dos  Passos  and 
Sara  Murphy,  who  were  visiting  Cuba. 

Later  that  spring,  Hemingway  fished 
again  on  Bimini,  accompanied  by  Jane 
and  Pauline  and  Jinny.  "Jinny  thinks  you're 
a  wonderful  girl,"  Ernest  wrote  Jane.  "I  told 
her  you  were  and  are  and  that  she  had  been 
seeing  the  best  of  you;  the  part  we  all  use  to 
see.  Don't  think  I've  seen  you  by  yourself  to 
talk  to  more  than  about  a  couple  of  times  in 
two  years."  Since  the  summer  of  1934,  be- 
fore Jane's  trip  to  Africa,  Hemingway  had, 
for  the  most  part,  seen  her  only  when  she 
was  surrounded  by  other  admirers,  on  Bimi- 
ni or  at  the  party  at  Jaimanitas  with  Dos 
Passos  (which  probably  inspired  the  scene  in 
To  Have  and  Have  Not  in  which  Helene 
Bradley  seduces  the  character  based  on  Dos 
Passos).  He  described  Arnold  Gingrich,  "the 
old  Mennonite,"  to  Jane  as  "one  of  the  nicest 
human  beings  I've  ever  known."  He  would 
soon  reverse  that  opinion. 

The  letter  continues  in  a  conciliatory  tone: 
"I  paid  your  liquor  bill  at  the  new  la  Bode- 
ga. He  swore  you  hadn't,  so  I  figured  you'd 
want  us  to,  but  if  you  did  I'll  be  delighted 
to  break  his  brown  neck  for  him.  It  didn't 
amount  to  anything. . . .  I'm  not  sore  at  you 
and  I'm  damned  sorry  I  was  cross  to  you. 
There's  some  things  I  don't  like  but  it's  a 
long  time  since  I  liked  or  disliked  everything 
and  I'd  rather  not  be  stuffy  and  get  along." 
He  even  ruminates  about  his  weight,  sug- 
gesting that  some  of  his  "crossness"  came 
from  feeling  physically  unattractive  around 


0 


t 


Jane:  "Have  taken  oil  13  pounds....  Hft 
decided  to  abandon  slobhood.  I  eel  so  gi|. 
with  weight  oil  not  going  to  put  on  any  mc  i 

Slill.  he  was  mine  eioss  than  ever  a  m<§* 
later,  when  Archibald  MacLeish  wrote 
"Mrs.  Mason  you  will  be  glad  to  kno\  .• 
telling  visitors  from  the  North  that  she  c  $ 
understand  how  any  woman  can  have 
but  sisterly  feelings  toward  myself."  Ernes  l'& 
sponded,  "As  for  your  sisterhood  pal  sh  r- 
a  bitch  say  I  and  am  documented.  And  I' 
documented  and  am  documented." 

In  a  section  that  would  later  be  cut  fl  fr 
To  Have  and  Have  Not,  he  created  a  bitt  i '-• 
inspired  vision  of  Jane: 

But  toward  him  through  the  crowd  moved  . 
beautiful  Mrs.  Bradley  herself,  tall,  bloi  , 
lovely,  her  perfect  features,  her  famous  s 
upper  lip,  her  unbelievable  brow,  her  shi 
copper-coloured  hair  drawn  back  like  & 
early  madonna,  and  her  medieval  cocj 
gown,  trailing  behind  her  as,  preceedet  . 
that  more  medieaval  bosom,  she  moved  tl 
periodless  hips  that  were,  as  she  move 
swishing  promise  to  any  man  who  pain 
wrote,  played  or  sang,  raced  yachts,  m 
cars,  played  polo,  shot  beasts,  birds,  rar 
office,  flew  his  own  or  anyone  else's  pi 
could  read  or  write,  or  lacking  any  of  tf 
was  kind  and  agreeable.  Although  there 
some  who  had  enjoyed  success  by  sin 
being  rude  and  brutal  and  others  poor  1 
Bradley  had  not  even  caught  their  names 
that  was  long  ago  when  Mrs.  Bradley  d 
too  much  which  now  she  never  did,  and  i 
people  thought  it  a  great  improvement 
though  there  were  others  liked  her  better  t  I 

Pauline's  sister,  Jinny,  was  smitten  j 
Jane  when  she  met  the  Masons,  fin 
it  hard  to  "adjust  to  the  rest  of  the  dr  h 
world"  afterward,  she  wrote.  Without  J  | 
there  were  "no  rollicky  bandy  nights," 
mourned.  Jane  added  Jinny  to  her  gift 
sending  her  shoes,  pants,  a  bag,  and  a  t 
In  the  summer  of  1936,  Jinny  visited  Jai  wt 
Havana,  accompanied  by  a  letter  from  n 
nest  saying,  "Of  all  the  things  I  havent  it 
never  will  have  value  this  shipment  the  1 
est."  Hemingway  adored  Jinny,  but  he  w  -.<■■ 
never  in  fact  "have"  her,  not  only  bee 
she  was  his  sister-in-law  but  also  becaustf; 
was  a  lesbian.  On  her  return.  Jinny 
have  informed  Ernest  of  Gingrich's  rom 
with  Jane;  Gingrich  thought  so.  She  l  I 
also  have  hinted  to  Ernest  that  somet  i: 
had  happened  between  Jane  and  he 
Ernest  recounted  in  a  letter  to  MacL 
Jinny,  having  "unfortunately  always  wh 
the  word  loved"  Jane,  had  "poxed  he 
while  easily  made  drunk  as  who  is  not 
If  Dick  Cooper  and  Arnold  Ginj 
and  Jinny  and  who  knew  who  else  had 
to  bed  with  Jane,  Hemingway  realized,  | 
he  was  getting  very  short  shrift.  Hi: 
sponse  was  violent.  In  his  letter  to  Mad 
he  said  he  "would  like  to  give  [her]  a  di 
burst"  of  gunfire.  But  first  he  had  to  dis 


C.'1 


leasures  of  being  with  her:  "O.k.  for 
ige  but  only  worth  the  5000  to  Ponds 
ct  or  am  prejudice."  He  also  worried 
being  involved  with  a  woman  whose 
oanalyst  wanted  to  write  about  him: 
;ooled  the  scientists  ardour  but  once  a 
ist  always  a  potential  contributor  to  the 
lay  review,"  he  wrote. 
e  thing  to  remember  with  "living  bitch- 
e  concluded  in  the  letter  to  MacLeish, 
at  when  you  see  them  they  will  con- 
you  that  they  never  said  any  such  things 
.by  stare  undeviating  they  have  con- 
d  me  for  years,  but  papa  you  wouldn't 
e  that,  tears,  you  know  I  wouldn't  say 
tears,  papa  you  know  I  love  you  more 
anybody  in  the  world  and  you  know  I 
never  would  have  been  able,  no  mat- 
tiat,  no  matter  if  drunk,  nor  how  drunk 
that  (substitute  Archie  for  Papa)  beau- 
ovely  bitcheating  bitches." 
another  section  later  cut  from  To  Have 
lave  Not,  Hemingway  pours  a  similar 
)f  furious  and  tender  feeling  about 
into  his  description  of  Helene  Bradley: 

matter  of  record,  Mrs.  Bradley  never 
;d  any  expense  . . .  nor  small  motor  acci- 

nor  really  anything  except  boredom, 
an-arrivai  of  guests  and  anyone  or  any- 
interfering  in  any  way  with  anything  she 
d  to  do  or  any  plans,  or  not  getting  who 
anted  at  the  exact  moment  she  wanted 

Mrs.  Bradley  was  lovely  and  generous 
beautiful  and  she  was  only  twenty-six. 
/as  really  even  more  beautiful  than  she 
upposed  to  be. 

nest  returned  to  Havana  in  early  De- 
er to  check  some  "site  information," 
pent  several  days  with  Jane  while  Grant 
iway  in  Venezuela.  He  had  lunch  and 
r  in  Jaimanitas,  and  they  swam  together 
ike  old  times.  It  was  his  good-bye.  He 
led  to  Key  West  and  within  a  week  met 
iture  wife  Martha  Gellhorn,  a  lovely 
le  as  full  of  energy  and  talent  as  Jane, 
'ith  more  focus,  in  both  work  and  love. 

month  later,  Hemingway  invited  his  law- 
yer, Moe  Speiser,  and  Arnold  Gingrich 
;y  West  for  a  few  days  to  go  over  the 
iscript  of  To  Have  and  Have  Not  for  po- 
1  legal  problems.  He  may  have  relished 
lance  to  confirm  any  goings-on  between 
Id  and  Jane  while  having  the  pleasure 
itching  Arnold  squirm.  Gingrich  later 
f  of  their  "riot"  of  arguments  over  the 
iscript.  Knowing  all  the  principal  char- 
>,  he  felt  that  Jane  and  Grant  Mason 
lohn  Dos  Passos  were  "libelled  right  up 
;ir  eyebrows,"  and  when  he  urged  that 
ientifying  details  about  Jane  be  cut  or 
rked,  Ernest  exploded:  "Goddamn  edi- 
:omes  down  to  Bimini  and  sees  a 
le,  and  he  hasn't  been  the  same  since!" 
rich  later  confessed  in  the  pages  of  Es- 
"I  was  on  a  sticky  wicket  and  afraid  I 


showed  it."  Hemingway  once  wrote  that 
whenever  his  sons  asked  why  Papa  no  long- 
er wrote  for  Esquire  he  always  said  it  was  be- 
cause he  and  Gingrich  could  not  "see  eye  to 
eye  over  a  blonde."  Nearly  25  years  later, 
when  Ernest  found  out  that  after  two  inter- 
vening marriages  Jane  had  ended  up  mar- 
ried to  Arnold  Gingrich,  he  was  flabbergast- 
ed. "I  can't  get  over  it,"  he  said.  "I  can't  be- 
lieve she  married  that  little  turd." 

Gingrich  wrote  to  Jane  that,  during  their 
dispute  over  the  manuscript,  Hemingway 
argued  that  she  "would  have  liked  the 
[Helene]  character  immensely,"  and  he  may 
have  been  right.  Ernest  believed  Jane  was 
flattered  to  have  been  the  model  for  Margot 
Macomber.  Clearly  she  had  wanted  him  to 
write  about  her,  and  she  shared  his  black 
sense  of  humor.  She  could  be  at  least  as 
bitter  about  herself  as  Hemingway  could  be 
about  her  or  about  himself— that  was  one 
of  the  things  that  drew  them  together,  and 
perhaps  one  of  the  things  that  kept  them 
apart.  Of  more  concern  to  Hemingway  and 
his  lawyer  may  have  been  the  character  of 
Tommy  Bradley,  for  if  Helene  was  with 
"pretty  obviousness"  Jane,  Tommy  could 
be  identified  as  Grant.  And  portraying  a 
Pan  Am  executive,  about  to  be  appointed 
by  President  Roosevelt  to  the  first  Civil 
Aeronautics  Authority,  as  a  man  who  got  his 
kicks  from  watching  his  wife  in  bed  with 
other  men  had  to  be  seen  as  a  legal  risk. 

Also  deleted  from  the  original  draft  of 
To  Have  and  Have  Not  was  Ernest's  playful 
peekaboo  about  whether  or  not  he  had 
slept  with  Jane: 

"Where's  the  old  slob  [Hemingway]?  If  he 
were  here  we  could  drink."  . . . 

"The  old  slob,"  said  the  bearded  man  [Brad- 
ley]. "You  know  I  believe  he's  the  only  writer 
who  ever  had  a  book  sell  over  a  hundred  thou- 
sand copies  that  never  slept  with  Helene." 

"How  do  you  know  he  never  slept  with 
Helene?" 

"That's  so,"  said  Bradley  meditatively. 
"Must  look  upstairs  in  that  glass  bookcase." 

In  his  letter  to  Jane  about  the  edits,  Gin- 
grich pleaded  with  her  to  be  "a  damn  fine 
actress  about  the  whole  thing"  and  not 
make  "any  kind  of  pass  at  Papa  about  it," 
or  else  he  would  look  like  "a  louse"  and 
Ernest  would  probably  "get  his  back  up" 
and  restore  the  excised  material.  Soon  after 
Jane  got  the  letter,  Ernest  was  on  his  way  to 
Spain  via  Paris.  "Mr.  H  is  fou  to  get  over  to 
Spain  and  is  only  held  up  by  his  book,"  Jin- 
ny had  written  to  Jane.  "He  does  love  a  bit 
of  killing."  In  January,  another  friend  had 
written  Jane,  "Ernest  has  been  snooping 
around  the  Red  Expedition  for  Spain.  Can't 
you  stop  him?"  Hemingway,  however,  was 
gone  from  Jane's  life  for  good.  There  were  a 
few  hurried  notes  from  Pauline,  and  a  birth- 
day telegram  to  the  Hemingways  from  Jane 
in  1938,  and  Jane  had  a  clipping  service 


send  her  mentions  of  Ernest  in  newspapers 
until  after  his  death.  But  the  ties  that  bound 
the  group  together  had  disintegrated. 

The  bowdlerized  version  of  To  Have  and 
Have  Not  was  published  in  1937.  Hem- 
ingway's exploration  of  the  "whoredom"  of 
writers  and  the  rich— of  wanting  too  much 
to  please,  and  wanting  to  be  protected  from 
the  harsher  realities  of  life— was  seriously 
crippled  by  the  pared-down  portrayal  of 
the  Bradleys.  Gingrich  himself  acknowl- 
edged that  without  new  writing  to  replace 
the  cuts— without  more  of  the  Bradleys  to 
represent  the  "haves"— the  title  of  the  book 
"applied  about  like  the  'fifty-fifty'  recipe  for 
hamburger:  one  horse,  one  rabbit."  What- 
ever he  told  Jane  about  the  manuscript 
hurt  her  terribly,  but  the  splinters  of  the 
Helene  Bradley  character  that  remained 
were  probably  more  painful  than  the  com- 
plex, clearly  exaggerated  whole.  For  al- 
though it  was  full  of  vitriol— which  applied 
as  much  to  "the  old  slob"  as  to  Helene— 
much  of  the  missing  material  was  darkly  hi- 
larious, in  the  spirit  of  the  old  drinking  and 
wisecracking  days  on  the  boat  in  Havana. 

In  Spain,  Hemingway  continued  writing 
Jane  out  of  his  system.  In  his  play  Tlie  Fifth 
Column,  Dorothy,  the  leading  lady,  is  situated 
in  the  hotel  room  next  to  Philip,  the  leading 
man,  just  as  Martha  Gellhorn  was  in  Hem- 
ingway's life.  But  the  woman's  character  is 
closer  to  Jane:  pampered,  idealistic,  restless, 
always  meaning  to  work  and  never  working, 
breezily  exchanging  one  man  for  another— in 
short,  personified  with  the  same  blend  of  mis- 
tiness and  admiration  that  went  into  Helene 
Bradley:  "She's  lazy  and  spoiled,  and  rather 
stupid,  and  enormously  on  the  make.  Still 
she's  very  beautiful,  very  friendly,  and  very 
charming  and  rather  innocent— and  quite 
brave."  The  protagonist  points  out  that  Amer- 
ican girls  who  go  to  Europe  are  the  kind 
who,  among  other  things,  "open  shops,"  as 
Jane  had  done  in  Havana,  and  in  an  echo  of 
Ernest's  early  letter  calling  Jane  "a  very  hand- 
some convenience,"  Philip  tells  Dorothy  she 
is  "a  very  handsome  commodity.  The  most 
beautiful  I've  ever  had." 

Hemingway  wrote  in  his  introduction  to 
the  play  that  Dorothy  was  the  figure  of 
"Nostalgia"— nostalgia,  perhaps,  for  his  own 
infatuation  with  Jane:  "Have  you  ever  been 
out  to  the  Sans  Souci  in  Havana  on  a  Sat- 
urday night  to  dance  in  the  Patio  under  the 
royal  palms?  They're  gray  and  they  rise  like 
columns  and  you  stay  up  all  night  there 
and  play  dice,  or  the  wheel,  and  drive  in  to 
Jaimanitas  for  breakfast  in  the  daylight." 

Jane  and  Grant  moved  back  to  Washing- 
ton, to  the  social  world  Jane  knew  so 
well.  She  was  soon  being  diligently  pur- 
sued by  John  Hamilton,  head  of  the  Re- 
publican National  Committee,  for  whom 


VANITY     FA 


I) 


x     Mrs   Hamil- 

trail  loi 

n    a  jeweled  elephant 

.•in.  assumed  was  a  gift  Iron) 

d  but  thai  was  actually  a  love 

token  from  Dick  Cooper.  She  bought  a 

i. n  in  in  Pennsylvania  with  the  money  from 

hei  divorce  settlement,  and  continued  to 

encourage  such  local  artists  as  Horace 

Pippin,  an  important  African-American 

folk  artist  who  did  a  fine  painting  of  a 

room  in  her  home  called  The  Den, 

A  few  years  later,  as  the  Hamiltons'  mar- 
riage  foundered,  .lane  was  introduced  to  a 
Reader's  Digest  editor  named  Paul  Palmer, 
with  whom  she  indulged  the  fantasy  of  a 
marriage-free  zone  of  satisfying  sexual  and 
creative  partnership.  When  the  war  was  over, 
Jane  went  to  Madrid  as  a  stringer  for  her 
friend  Cissy  Patterson's  paper.  The  Washing- 
ton Times-Herald.  If  it  was  too  late  to  be  with 
Hemingway,  she  could  at  least  play  the  role 
of  a  minor  Martha  Gellhorn. 

Palmer  never  joined  her  as  they  had 
planned,  so  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  Jane 
was  really  on  her  own.  She  had  been  mar- 
ried since  she  was  17,  always  someone's  de- 
pendent. Now  she  wrote  everyone  saying 
that  she  loved  paddling  her  own  canoe,  and 
that  she  would  forever  stay  away  from  the 
treacherous  shoals  of  "mirage."  Arnold  Gin- 
grich offered  her  the  job  of  Paris  editor  of  a 
new  spin-off  of  Esquire,  called  Moment,  ad- 
dressing the  current  situation  in  Europe  for 
the  benefit  of  an  American  audience.  But 
Moment  was  too  aptly  named:  its  finances 
never  came  together,  and  the  small  editorial 
staff  dispersed.  Jane  was  soon  married 
again,  this  time  to  the  European  bureau 
chief  for  Time-Life,  George  Abell,  known  for 
his  column,  "Ready,  Willing,  and  George 
Abell,"  for  being  one  of  the  "Ten  Best 
Dressed  Men  in  Washington,"  and  for  com- 
posing dirty  limericks.  The  marriage  turned 
sour,  and  when  Jane  fled  in  1955,  her  fourth 
and  last  husband  was  waiting  for  her  at  the 
airport  in  the  States:  Arnold  Gingrich. 

They  settled  into  a  life  of  bohemian  gentil- 
ity in  a  12th  Street  town  house  in  Greenwich 
Village.  After  a  session  with  a  Ouija  board  at 
her  aunt's  house,  Jane  came  to  believe  that 
she  was  a  spirit  medium.  She  filled  dozens 
of  notebooks  with  automatic  writing— more 
writing  than  she'd  ever  done  on  her  own— 


and  ultimately  found  herself  struggling  against 

sometimes  violent  possession  by  multiple 
personalities  l.eicestei.  the  only  one  of  the 
Hemingways  still  in  touch  with  Jane,  wrote 
to  Grant,  ".lame,  when  in  shape,  can  be  the 
most  entrancing  female  in  a  roomfull  of 
people.  But  Janie,  when  full  of  a  number  of 
personal  devils,  can  be  a  serious  contender 
for  an  unprintable  title."  While  Ernest  was 
caught  in  the  downward  spiral  that  would 
lead  to  his  suicide,  Jane's  spirit  visitations  be- 
came so  harrowing  that  she  and  Arnold 
moved  from  their  haunted  house  into  the 
Lowell  hotel.  Deliveries  from  the  Sherry  Wine 
&  Spirits  Co.  arrived  frequently,  and  the 
Gingriches  were  kicked  out  when  Jane  start- 
ed a  fire  by  falling  asleep  with  a  lit  cigarette. 
Several  of  Jane's  poems  made  it  into  Es- 
quire under  pseudonyms  such  as  Proctor 
Harwell  and  James  Matheson.  Arnold  en- 
couraged her  to  collaborate  on  a  book 
about  her  experiences  in  the  spirit  world 
with  the  research  director  of  the  New  York 
Committee  for  the  Investigation  of  Paranor- 
mal Occurrences.  But  the  book  never  found 
a  publisher,  nor  did  her  memoir  about  her 
childhood,  nor  did  an  epistolary  novel 
called  Dear  Meg,  in  which  the  main  charac- 
ter exists  only  in  the  various  distorted  ways 
her  correspondents  see  her.  Both  the  novel 
and  the  automatic  writing  can  be  seen  as 
bitter  commentaries  on  Jane's  ultimate  rela- 
tion to  the  literary  world:  she  was  not  a 
writer,  she  was  a  conduit,  an  impressionable 
personality  to  be  written  to,  or  about. 

Jane  Kendall  Mason  and  Ernest  Heming- 
way shared  a  dark  side,  a  capacity  for 
bitterness;  both  recognized  something  of 
themselves  in  the  other.  Jane,  the  quintes- 
sence of  femininity,  was  as  insecurely  pre- 
occupied with  her  womanhood  as  Heming- 
way, a  paragon  of  machismo,  was  with  his 
manhood.  They  were  sensitive  people  who 
experienced  their  time's  sex  and  gender 
confusions  more  acutely  than  most  of  their 
contemporaries.  Both  were  torn  between 
self-expression— even  self-glorification— and 
utter  self-erasure.  In  Jane,  easily  discour- 
aged, the  two  tendencies  kept  canceling 
each  other  out,  while  Hemingway  managed 
both  with  more  conviction  and  more  suc- 
cess. His  ultimate  self-erasure,  with  a  shot- 
gun in  1961,  was  brief  and  final,  while 
Jane's  took  another  20  years  of  drinking 
and  nervous  collapse  and  a  stroke. 

Jane  seems  a  woman  emblematic  of  her 


age  at  once  too  modern  and  too  liaditi 
al,  too  free  and  too  dependent,  for  her  o 
peace  of  mind.  She  was  a  beautiful  refl 
tion  of  others'  ideals  and  fears.  In  the  192 
society  pages  saw  a  demure  but  mod 
debutante  who  could  provide  a  comfort 
bridge  to  the  past  ("not  at  all  the  flap 
type").  A  few  years  later,  in  the  early  193 
Vogue  featured  her  as  one  of  "the  d 
American  type  . . .  active  and  keenly  aw 
of  the  world  they  live  in."  Hemingway  bi 
raphers  Carlos  Baker  and  A.  E.  Hotchi  \ 
writing  in  the  1950s  and  60s,  quoted  Err 
alluding  to  Jane  as  the  model  of  a  rising  t 
of  aggressive  female  sexuality.  Accordinj 
Baker,  Hemingway  told  him  that  Mar 
Macomber  had  been  invented  "comp 
with  handles  from  the  worst  bitch  I  kr 
(then)  and  when  I  first  knew  her  she'd  b 
lovely.  Not  my  dish,  not  my  pigeon,  not 
cup  of  tea,  but  lovely  for  what  she  was, , 
I  was  her  all  of  the  above,  which  is  wl 
ever  you  make  of  it."  Hotchner  wrote  f 
Ernest  had  told  him  "in  detail  about 
real-life  bitch  who  was  the  prototype 
Margot  Macomber,  a  woman  whose  < 
virtue  was  an  overeagerness  to  get  laid 
that's  a  virtue  in  your  book.'"  Yet  as  H 
ingway's  letters  to  Jane  make  clear, 
"bitch"  was  initially  the  object  of  a  w; 
if  frustrated,  tenderness. 


Toward  the  end  of  her  life,  though 
valided  by  a  stroke,  Jane  was  still  a 
matic  figure  with  strawberry-blond  brai 
her  waist.  She  reduced  everyone  she 
known  to  "he"  or  "she."  "He's  dead  n 
Or  "She  was  crazy,  poor  thing."  When 
discovered  that  my  birthday  was  in  July, 
announced,  "My  husband  Ernest's  birt 
was  in  July."  With  Hemingway  biogra 
Bernice  Kert,  Jane  "replied  haltingly  to 
tions"  that  she  might  have  married  Erne1 
neither  of  them  had  been  married  at 
time.  They  never  argued,  she  told  Kert, 
teased  each  other.  Yet  whatever  happe 
between  them,  Jane  probably  never  n 
wanted  to  marry  Ernest  Hemingway 
wanted  to  be  Ernest  Hemingway. 

Jane  died  of  complications  from  th 
cancer  in  1980,  four  years  after  Art 
Gingrich's  death  from  the  same  dise 
Their  tombstone  is  an  open  book  mad 
marble.  On  her  page  is  written:  "Tal 
too  many,  not  enough  of  any."  In  the 
she  would  be  remembered  not  for  her 
talents,  but  for  Hemingway's.  D 


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/  sponsored  by  the  designer, 

jrity      tournament      players 

eled  clothing  from  the  newly 

:hed    Joseph    Abboud     Golf 

action,  while  comedian  Tom 

;son  and  Mr.  Abboud  himself 

ided    commentary    on    each 

t.  The  show's  grand  finale  was  a 

ial    musical    performance    by 

'  Bennett  and  his  orchestra. 


imuel  Jackson  looks  clapper  in  his  newest  role.  L  to  R:  Joseph  Abboud  and 
Gumbel  watch  from  the  sidelines. 


Giorgio  Armani  Parfums 

April  7,  Vanity  Fair  joined  Giorgio   Armani    Parfums 

utives  and  Robinsons  May  beauty  advisors  to  celebrate 
lunch  of  two  new  fragrances,  Emporio  Armani  For  Her  and 
orio  Armani  For  Him. 

cocktail  reception  for  400  was  held  at  Los  Angeles  hot 
The  Gate. 


L  to  R:  Toria  Garrett, 
.ssistant  Vice  President  of 
•irketing,  Giorgio  Armani 
rfums,  has  her  hands  full. 

Dave  Mullen,  CEO  of 
•obinsons  May,  enjoys  the 
cities  with  Dick  Roderick, 

Senior  Vice  President 

Sales,  Cosmair's  Designer 

Fragrance  Division. 


The  Ultimate  Drive 

BMW  of  North  America  and  the  Susan  G.  Komen  Breast 
Cancer  Foundation  invite  you  to  help  find  a  cure  for  breast 
cancer  by  participating  in  the  Ultimate  Drive.  Two  fleets 
of  BMWs  will  tour  the  United  States,  making  stops  at  over 
200  local  BMW  centers.  In  an  effort  to  raise  $1  million, 
BMW  will  donate  $1  to  the  Komen  Foundation  for  each 
test-drive  mile  taken. 

To  participate  at  a  location  near  you,  please  call  toll-free 
877-4-A-DRJVE  or  visit  www.bmwusa.com  for  more  details 
about  this  exciting  driving  experience. 

First  Look  Film  Series 

The  First  Look  Film  Series  is  a  bicoastal  monthly  screening 
program,  founded  by  the  Tribeca  Film  Center  and  Eastman 
Kodak  and  supported  by  Vanity  Fair,  Evian,  and  Grand 
Marnier.  The  series  provides  a  premiere  platform  for  emerg- 
ing filmmakers  and  gives  influential  members  of  the 
independent  film  community  a  "first  look"  at  promising  new 
work.  Each  screening  is  followed  by  a  reception,  where 
filmmakers  can  mingle  with  the  who's  who  of  the  film  indus- 
try. The  April  premiere  of  Nisha  Ganatra's  Chutney  Popcorn 
was  standing-room-only  and  received  unanimous  acclaim. 


L  to  R:  Cast  of  Chutney  Popcorn,  Eliza  Foss, 
Sakina  Jaffrey,  and  Madhur  Jaffrey.  Right:  Director  of 
Chutney  Popcorn,  Nisha  Ganatra  and  First  Look's 
co-chair,  Trina  Wyatt. 


Drink  of  the  Month 

Bombay  Sapphire  Martini-you've  never  had  it  like  this 
Crisp,  distinctive,  and  delectably  dry,  Bombay  Sapphire  Gin 
lends  a  singularly  exquisite  taste  to  this  classic  favorite. 
Bombay  Sapphire  always  lives  up  to  its  reputation  as  the 
gem  of  gins. 

2  ounces  Bombay  Sapphire  Gin,  dash  of  Martini  &  Rossi 
Extra  Dry  Vermouth,  green  olives  or  lemon  twist 
Place  gin  and  vermouth  in  a  shaker  filled  with  ice,  shake  vig- 
orously, and  strain  into  a  chilled  martini  glass.  Garnish  with 
green  olives  or  a  twist  of  lemon. 


had  Lutin  urges  Cancers  not  to  fear  a  walk  down  Memory  Lane 


f 


yft     JUNE    22      JULY    22 

nd  to  cling  to  memories  longer  than  other  people  do, 
i  i  al  i.>il  loi  you  to  think  back  to  where  yon 
i  and  1983,  With  Mars  making  a  station  down  in  your 
4ih  house  at  the  point  ol  the  Saturn-Pluto  conjunction  of  the  early  1980s, 
you  need  to  revisit  the  plaee  you  lived  in  hack  then.  Bear  in  mind  that 
the  reason  foi  returning  there  is  to  put  some  ghosts  to  rest  and  to  try  to 
understand  the  events  that  changed  your  family  forever,  not  to  torture 
yoursell  with  thoughts  of  days  gone  by. 


L  E  O 


St 


JULY    23-AUG.    22 


It's  good  that  you  still  have  a  friend  or  two  you  can  call  up  and  talk  to 
once  in  a  while.  For  that  you  should  get  on  your  knees  and  thank  God. 
Pressure  on  you  is  building  from  all  directions,  and  will  most  likely  con- 
tinue to  do  so  tor  the  rest  of  the  summer.  With  a  new  moon  in  your  solar 
11th  house  and  the  ruler  of  your  9th  in  the  3rd,  communication  is  your 
greatest  asset.  The  only  way  to  enjoy  a  moment  of  peace  is  to  keep  every- 
body else  talking  to  one  another.  That  requires  you  to  talk  out  of  both 
sides  of  your  mouth  now  and  then,  which  shouldn't  be  much  of  a  stretch. 

VIRGO        1 1 V  AUG.     23-SEPT.     22 

You're  spending  money  now  as  if  you  had  it.  You're  also  probably  kick- 
ing yourself  every  time  you  slap  down  your  credit  card  or  write  a  check. 
You  don't  have  much  choice,  however,  when  a  new  moon  in  your  mid- 
heaven  trines  the  ruler  of  your  8th  house  in  your  2nd.  Your  public  image 
forces  you  to  get  off  your  little  gerbil's  wheel  and  play  the  big  shot.  You 
certainly  would  never  want  to  turn  into  a  blowhard,  but  when  you're  sur- 
rounded by  a  group  of  people  who  look  up  to  you,  you  have  to  be  gra- 
cious and  professional.  And  that  usually  costs  money. 


>5 


DEC.    22-JAN.    19 


CAPRICORN 

It's  usually  a  good  omen  when  any  planet  comes  to  the  solar  midlicaverj 
in  a  Capricorn's  horoscope.  It  helps  you  to  work  more  zealously  in  ger 
eral  and  also  gives  you  the  juice  you  need  to  bring  creative  projects 
fruition.  Since  this  is  a  work  time,  take  advantage  of  it.  With  Pluto  iij 
your  12th  house,  you've  probably  found  that  no  matter  how  much  zes| 
you  put  into  a  job  of  any  kind  your  enthusiasm  flags  after  a  while  an] 
you  start  wondering  what  the  hell  you  are  exerting  yourself  for.  At  th^ 
moment,  Mars  should  be  giving  you  a  jolt  of  energy.  Savor  it. 


JAN.    20-FEB.    I. 


AQUARIUS      ng 

Owing  to  your  private  aches  and  personal  pains,  you  may  feel  that  yoil 
are  falling  apart  at  the  seams.  Nothing,  it  seems,  can  turn  you  from  th| 
stubborn  belief  that  your  days  on  this  earth  are  numbered.  During 
grand  trine  in  air  signs,  though,  so  much  happiness  is  all  around  that  nol 
even  you  can  spoil  the  party  with  pronouncements  about  the  brevity  ol 
human  life.  Your  current  flash  of  enlightenment  may  allow  you  to  see  thai 
nothing  lasts  forever,  but  does  that  mean  you  have  to  broadcast  the  new| 
just  as  everyone  else  is  starting  to  feel  groovy? 


X 


PISCES     _y%    FEB.    I9-MARCH20 

Stop  fretting.  Your  passion  is  not  dead  after  all.  It  has  merely  been  asleepl 
As  Mars  changes  direction  in  your  solar  8th  house,  it  will  not  only  draw 
you  into  financial  deals  and  mergers  but  also  awaken  any  desires  and 
needs  for  intimacy  that  you  have  packed  away  in  mothballs  and  stored 
down  in  the  cellar.  Ironically,  as  the  new  moon  occurs  at  the  bottom  ol 
your  solar  chart,  your  family  will  continue  to  make  you  feel  wanted  anq 
cared  for,  no  matter  how  alienated  you  have  sensed  you  were  at  times  anq 
may  someday  be  again. 


LIBRA      ^^»     SEPT.     23-OCT.     23 

Now  that  Mars  is  changing  direction,  every  Libra  could  be  the  subject  of 
a  song  that  goes  something  like  this:  "Though  you  try  to  be  nice,  the  soul 
of  gentility,  /  You're  exuding  an  ocean  of  hidden  hostility.  /  One  could  get 
diabetes  from  that  smile  on  your  face,  /  And  you're  packing  a  rod  under 
your  hankie  of  lace."  However,  if  you  can  channel  your  pent-up  energy 
into  creative  projects,  you  don't  need  to  feel  thwarted  or  frustrated.  More 
important,  once  you  are  up-front  with  people  and  quit  the  passive- 
aggressive  garbage,  everybody  will  be  a  lot  happier,  including  you. 


w 


OCT.    24-NOV.    21 


SCORPIO 

One  reason  you  have  not  been  operating  on  your  usual  48  cylinders  is  that 
Mars  has  been  retrograde  in  your  sign  since  last  March.  When  this  oc- 
curs, it's  tantamount  to  being  whacked  in  the  stomach  with  a  two-by-four. 
Now  Mars  is  starting  to  move  forward  at  the  end  of  your  12th  house,  and 
it  will  re-emerge  in  Scorpio  on  July  4.  For  you  that  will  truly  be  Indepen- 
dence Day.  Until  then,  move  cautiously.  Keep  your  eyes  directed  toward 
the  light.  Do  not  obsess  about  secret  enemies.  Above  all,  try  to  be  spiritu- 
ally correct.  And  don't  go  getting  yourself  arrested. 


SAGITTARIUS 


NOV.    22-DEC.    21 


In  your  noble  recent  efforts  to  maintain  control  in  complex  situations 
where  maintaining  control  is  a  virtual  impossibility,  you  have  had  to 
close  yourself  off  from  some  of  your  old  cronies.  Pluto's  continued  tran- 
sit through  Sagittarius  is  making  it  extremely  difficult  in  general  for  you 
to  relate  to  loved  ones  as  warmly  and  openly  as  you  once  easily  could. 
With  a  new  moon  in  your  7th  house,  in  trine  aspect  to  your  11th,  how- 
ever, you  must  crawl  out  of  your  cave  and  socialize.  And,  frankly,  relat- 
ing to  people  is  the  best  antidote  for  self-obsession. 


ARIES         f        MARCH    21-APRIt    19 

Except  for  the  money  thing,  you  have  to  admit  that  so  far  it's  been  a  pretj 
ty  good  year.  As  Jupiter  continues  to  zoom  through  your  sign,  there's  nd 
reason  to  lose  momentum  and  drop  into  one  of  your  periodic  black  holes) 
Your  ruling  planet  is  going  forward  after  three  months  of  being  retrograde 
This  will  give  you  an  opportunity  to  reinvent  yourself  for  the  thousandtll 
time.  You  have  to  be  able  to  handle  opposition  and  challenges,  though,  bq 
cause  there  are  some  rather  provocative  figures  out  there  who'd  like 
knock  your  block  off. 


TAU  RUS 


APRIL20-MAY20 


If  you  stay  healthy  and  keep  your  anger  at  bay,  you  should  start  makinj 
some  serious  money  now.  Provided  you  don't  fall  prey  to  the  temptatioi 
to  meddle  in  the  dirty  politics  of  revenge,  the  new  moon  taking  place  iij 
your  solar  2nd  house  and  aspecting  your  6th  could  spur  you  on  to  splen 
didly  productive  heights.  You  just  need  to  remain  focused  on  personal  ful 
fillment  and  determined  to  restructure  your  life.  You  do  not  need  to  builJ 
up  a  load  of  resentment  toward  the  idiots  who,  at  times  in  the  past,  havl 
tried  to  make  your  life  miserable. 

x 

GEMINI     ^^      MAY2I-JUNE2I 

Children  are  about  to  start  screaming  for  your  attention.  Even  if  you  dori 
have  kids  of  your  own,  they're  coming  into  your  life  now  whether  you'r 
ready  or  not.  That's  what  always  happens  when  Mars  moves  forward  a 
the  end  of  your  solar  5th  house.  If  you're  unhappily  married  and  no 
morally  opposed  to  having  an  affair,  there's  one  out  there  now  for  the  tak 
ing.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  are  in  a  relationship  that  is  getting  old  an 
tired,  and  you  want  to  keep  it  alive  for  five  more  minutes,  you'll  have  t 
face  the  fact  that  it  desperately  needs  a  major  injection  of  something. 


To  hear  Michael  Lutin  read  your  weekly  horoscope,  call  1-900-28 V-FA1R  on  a  Touch-Tone  phone. 
Cost:  $1.95  per  minute.  If  you  are  under  18,  you  need  parental  permission. 


VANITY     FAIR 


dme, macy's  and  Universal  Pictures  Invite  you  and  A  Guest  To  A 


n.litHiW'lil'lHUHllii 

THE  CON  IS  ON 


NEW  YORK 

BROOKLYN 

Kings  Plaza 

Brooklyn  Macy's 

LONG  ISLAND 

Manhasset 
Roosevelt  Field  Mall 

MANHATTAN 
Herald  Square 

STATEN  ISLAND 
Staten  Island  Macy's 


South  Coast  Plaza 


STEVE  MARTIN 

Together  for  the  first  time. 


lllMlBIHlli 


llFIPMIP™ 


BOSTON 

Macy's  Boston 
South  Shore  Plaza  Mall 


VIRGINIA/DC. 

Pentagon  City  Mall 

Tyson  Galleria 
Macy's  Springfield 


Just  visit  the  men's  fragrance  counter  at  the  above  Macy's  stores  and 
:eive  complimentary  tickets  with  any  purchase  from  the  Chrome  Fragrance  Collection. 

•  valid  June  11  to  June  21  (while  supplies  last).  Other  screening  information,  including  screening  date,  is  listed  on  the  screening  pass 
handed  out  at  Macy's  Chrome  counters.  For  additional  information  on  "Bowfinger"  log  onto  www.bowfinger.com. 


CHROME 


IN  THEATRES  JULY  30 


www.bowfinger.com 


ucslionnaire 


■  ■■ 


Harry  Connick  Jr. 


From  his  days  as  a  Bourbon 

Street  child  prodigy  to  his  meteoric  rise 

to  fame  with  the  1989  hit  soundtrack 

for  When  Harry  Met  Sally  ...  to 

his  current  incarnation  as  a  leading 

man,  Harry  Connick  Jr.,  at  31,  has 

lived  a  jazz  legend's  life.  This  month, 

Connick  rekindles  his  big-band  sound 

with  Come  by  Me  (his  13th  album) 

and  reflects  here  on  marriage,  true  love, 

and  his  Louisiana  state  of  mind 


What  is  your  current  state  of  mind? 

Louisiana. 

What  is  your  idea  of  perfect  happiness? 

Healthy,  happy  family. 

What  is  your  greatest  extravagance? 

Impulse. 

What  is  your  favorite  journey? 

From  here  to  eternity. 

On  what  occasion  do  you  lie? 

When  the  truth  is  too  boring. 

What  do  you  dislike  most  about  your  appearance? 

That  it  matters. 

Which  living  person  do  you  most  despise? 

Myself. 

What  is  your  most  marked  characteristic? 

Confidence. 

Who  are  your  heroes  in  real  life? 

Jill  Connick,  Harry  Connick, 
among  others. 

Which  words  or  phrases  do  you  most  overuse? 

Hate  and  love. 

What  do  you  most  value  in  your  friends? 

True  love. 

What  is  your  greatest  regret? 

Don't  have  one. 

Which  talent  would  you  most  like  to  have? 

Motherhood. 

What  do  you  consider  your  greatest 
achievement? 

My  children. 

What  is  your  most  treasured  possession? 

My  wedding  ring. 

What  do  you  regard  as  the  lowest  depth  of 
misery? 

Lack  of  faith. 

Where  would  you  like  to  live? 

With  the  fish. 

How  would  you  like  to  die? 

I  wouldn't  like  it. 

If  you  were  to  die  and  come  back  as  a  person  or 
thing,  what  do  you  think  it  would  be? 

Me— all  over  again. 

If  you  could  choose  what  to  come  back  as,  what 
would  it  be? 

Me— I'd  try  to  get  it  right  next  time. 

What  is  your  motto? 

"Be  on  time  and  be  nice." 


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© 


THE  RELENTLESS  PURSUIT  OF  PERFECTION. 


AUGUST      1999      N?    4  6  8 


Features 


EYE  WIDE  OPEN      136 


EXTREME  NORTON   |  128 

Branding  each  role  with  a  miraculous  mix  of  intellect  and  instinct 
Edward  Norton  is  his  generation's  answer  to  Hoffman,  De  Niro, 
and  Pacino.  As  the  29-year-old  star  of  American  History  X 
opens  in  what  may  be  the  decade's  most  controversial  movie, 
David  Fincher's  Fight  Club,  Peter  Biskind  learns  how  Norton  has 
taken  Hollywood  to  the  edge.  Photographs  by  Herb  Ritts. 

LITHE  SPIRIT  |  134 

Robert  Erdmann  and  Leslie  Bennetts  spotlight  actress 

Saffron  Burrows,  a  stunning  six-footer  who  takes  on  biomedically 

altered  sharks  in  Renny  Harlin's  action  thriller  Deep  Blue  Sea. 

KUBRICK  I  136 

In  addition  to  13  films,  including  Dr.  Strangelove,  2001:  A  Space 
Odyssey,  A  Clockwork  Orange,  The  Shining,  and  this  summer's 
Eyes  Wide  Shut,  Stanley  Kubrick  left  behind  a  legend  of 
near-mad  obsession.  But  as  Michael  Herr,  Kubrick's  longtime 
friend  and  the  co-screenwriter  of  Full  Meted  Jacket,  recalls,  those 
who  were  drafted  into  the  director's  cinematic  army  found 
warmth,  humor,  and  a  genius  that  perfectly  melded  life  and  art. 

DANGEROUS  BEAUTY  I  152 

Patricia  Duff's  exquisite  face  and  romantic  escapades  have 

made  her  the  talk  of  three  towns.  Marjorie  Williams  follows 

her  perilous  path  from  Washington,  D.C.,  to  Los  Angeles, 

to  New  York,  where  the  tabloids  are  feasting  on  Duff's  courtroom 

battles  with  her  fourth  ex-husband,  billionaire  Ronald  Perelman, 

and  on  her  latest  power  liaison,  with  Senator  Robert  Torricelli. 

A  TOUGH  GUY  IN  TAILS  |  158 

Bruce  Weber  and  Steven  Daly  spotlight  former  British  soccer 
sensation  Vinnie  Jones,  whose  role  in  Lock,  Stock  and  Two  Smoking 
Barrels  gave  him  some  Hollywood  muscle— and  a  part  in  Jerry 
Bruckheimer's  latest  big-budget  production.  Gone  in  60  Seconds. 

SEASONS  IN  THE  SUN   I  160 

Celebrating  the  40th  anniversary  of  the  Four  Seasons  restaurant 
whose  banquettes  are  filled  daily  with  A-list  publishers,  pols,  and 
moguls— Mimi  Sheraton  relives  the  inspired  birth  of  America's  first 
contemporary  restaurant  and  chronicles  its  emergence  as  the  mecca 
of  the  power  lunch.  Photographs  by  Michael  O'Neill  and  Todd  Eberle. 

MARRIED.  WITH  TIGERS  I  170 

How  did  two  young  immigrants  from  Germany  turn  a  love 

of  magic,  exotic  animals,  and  flamboyant  costumes  into  the  most 

successful  entertainment  act  in  Las  Vegas  history?  Exploring 

the  splendiferous  domain  of  Siegfried  and  Roy,  Matt  Tyrnauer 

discovers  what  has  kept  a  family  of  55  tigers,  16  lions, 

and  two  finely  chiseled,  middle-aged  "boys"  casting  its  spell 

for  40  years.  Photographs  by  Michel  Comic. 

I    II  N  I   I  N  U  I    l>     ON     I'  M.  I        It 


RALPH      LAUREN 

COLLECTION 


*  YORK     LONDON     PARIS     ATHENS^  C  HICAGO     MANHASSET     SAN  FRANCISCO     DALLAS     PALO  ALTO     BEVERLY  HILLS     PALM  BEACH 

,  YEOR  PERSONAL  SERVICE    1  •  800  •  8S9  •  4538 


YFAIR 


CON  r  I  N  U  I    I)    I   ROM     I'AG  I:     2  2 


AUGUST      1999 


Col 


umns 


BRILL'S  BULLY  PULPIT  I  52 

A  year  ago,  Steve  Brill  debuted  his  media  review,  Brill's  Content, 
with  a  sizzle.  Since  then,  James  Wolcott  argues,  Brill's 
warring  roles— journalism  maverick  and  verbose  magistrate- 
may  have  doomed  his  magazine  to  irrelevant  mediocrity. 

THE  FAMOUS  AND  THE  DEAD   |  66 

The  case  of  former  Black  Panther  Mumia  Abu-Jamal  has  become 
an  international  cause  celebre.  But,  Buzz  Bissinger  reports,  those 
championing  Abu-JamaPs  fight  for  a  new  trial  face  a  stubborn  foe: 
the  widow  of  the  policeman  he  was  convicted  of  murdering  in  1981. 

HALL  OF  FAME  I  80 

Wayne  Lawson  nominates  the  Brooklyn  Academy  of  Music's  outgoing 
president,  Harvey  Lichtenstein,  for  luring  the  world's  premier  talents 
to  a  once  unfashionable  borough.  Portrait  by  Annie  Leibovitz. 

THE  ESSENTIAL  BROOKS  I  82 

Stewart  Shining  and  Leslie  Bennetts  spotlight  Albert  Brooks,  whose 

new  movie,  The  Muse,  is  a  comic  portrait  of  Hollywood  angst. 

CIRCUS  MAXIMUS  |  84 

Artists,  lords,  lads,  and  ladies— the  camera  caught  all  at  V.F.'s  toast  to 

its  European  edition  at  the  Criterion  Brasserie  in  Piccadilly  Circus. 

MURDER  MOST  YALE  |  86 

Following  the  stabbing  of  Suzanne  Jovin,  a  brainy,  beautiful  Yale 
senior,  on  December  4,  her  thesis  adviser  emerged  as  a  chief  suspect. 
But  police  have  yet  to  make  an  arrest.  Suzanna  Andrews  investigates 
the  mystery  and  its  shattering  effect  on  an  Ivy  League  community. 


I 


Vanities 


DANIEL'S  BOON   I  113 

New  York  Press  publisher  Russ  Smith  proves  that  the  speed  dial  is 
mightier  than  the  sword;  vicious  circle— diagramming  the  90s. 


Et  Cet 


era 


EDITOR'S  LETTER:  Grand  gestures    |  42 

CONTRIBUTORS  I  44 

LETTERS:  Little  boys  lost  |  48 

CREDITS  |  191 

PLANETARIUM:  Lay  off  the  books,  Leo  |  198 

PROUST  QUESTIONNAIRE:  Sandra  Bernhard  I  200 

TO  I  INI)  CONDI    NASI  MA(iA/INI  S  ON    THI    WIIKI  I)  WIDI    Wl  II.  VISIT  www.cpiciirious.COIH. 

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VAMYttlll 


Take  a  Look 


The  First  Look  Film  Series  is  a  monthly  screening  program, 
founded  by  the  Tribeca  Film  Center  and  Eastman  Kodak  and 
sponsored  by  Evian,  Grand  Marnier,  and  Vanity  Fair.  Held 
bicoastally,  in  both  New  York  and  Los  Angeles,  First  Look 
provides  a  premier  platform  for  emerging  filmmakers  to  debut 
their  projects,  while  giving  influential  members  of  the  film 
community  a  "first  look"  at  promising  new  work.  The  1998- 
1999  season  finale  was  held  this  past  June  and  featured 
Jean-Marc  Vallee's  Loser  Love,  starring  Laurel  Holloman  and 
Lauren  Hutton.  First  Look  will  launch  its  ninth  season  in 
New  York  on  October  13.  For  more  information  on  the  First 
Look  Film  Series,  please  visit  www.tribecafilm.com. 


Above  from  left:  First  Look  guests  Julie  Des  Roberts;  Jon  Ein  and  Sara  Vogel. 

Telluride  Film  Festival 

The  26th  Telluride  Film  Festival  takes  place  this  Labor  Day 
weekend,  Friday,  September  3,  through  Monday,  September 
6.  Set  against  the  backdrop  of  the  exquisite  Colorado 
Rockies,  Telluride  has  become  known  as  the  world's  most 
intimate  film  festival,  celebrating  all  aspects  of  the  art-rather 
than  the  business-of  film. 

Sponsors  of  the  1999  Telluride  Film  Festival  include:  Ken 
Burns,  Dolby  Digital,  FilmFour  Channel,  Kathleen  Kennedy 
and  Frank  Marshall,  Nicole  Kidman  and  Tom  Cruise,  Kodak, 
Mumm  Cuvee  Napa,  Neutrogena,  Pine  Ridge  Winery,  Polo 
Jeans,  Polo  Ralph  Lauren,  Smirnoff,  Starz!  Cinema,  the  Town 
of  Telluride,  Turner  Classic  Movies/DirecTV,  Vanity  Fair, 
Virgin  Atlantic  Airways,  and  Volkswagen. 

Special  support  provided  by  the  Academy  Foundation  of  the 
Academy  of  Motion  Picture  Arts  &  Sciences. 

Passes  for  the  1999  program  are  now  available:  Acme  Passes 
are  $250,  Festival  Passes  are  $500,  and  Patron  Passes  are 
$2500.  For  tickets  or  to  request  more  information,  call 
603-643-1255,  fax  603-643-5938,  email  tellufilm@aol.com, 
or  visit  the  Festival  Web  site  at  www.telluridefilmfestival.com. 

For  information  about  sponsoring  the  Telluride  Film  Festival, 
please  call  Nancy  Berger,  Vanity  Fair  Associate  Publisher, 
at  212-286-7254. 


The  Ultimate  Drive 

BMW  of  North  America  and  the  Susan  G.  Komen  Breast 
Cancer  Foundation  invite  you  to  help  find  a  cure  for  breast 
cancer  by  participating  in  the  Ultimate  Drive.  Two  fleets 
of  BMWs  will  tour  the  United  States,  making  stops  at  over 
200  local  BMW  centers.  In  an  effort  to  raise  $1  million, 
BMW  will  donate  $1  to  the  Komen  Foundation  for  each 
test-drive  mile  taken. 

To  participate  at  a  location  near  you,  please  call  toll-free 
877-4-A-DRIVE  or  visit  www.bmwusa.com  for  more  details 
about  this  exciting  driving  experience. 


A  Timely  Affair 


On  May  13,  Tourneau  and  Turner  Classic  Movies  hosted  a 
picture-perfect  evening,  in  celebration  of  classic  timepieces 
and  classic  films.  As  guests  browsed  and  mingled  through 
the  Tourneau  Time  Machine  on  Madison  Avenue,  they 
were  treated  to  a  unique  visual  retrospective,  featuring 
pictures,  movie  stills,  and  memorabilia  from  Turner  Classic 
Movies'  films,  such  as  Gone  with  the  Wind,  Singin'  in  the  Rain, 
and  The  Wizard  ofOz. 


Clockwise  from  top  left:  Raymond  Weil's  Benny  Shabtai  and  Tourneau's  Anthony 
D'Ambrosio;  Turner  Classic  Movies'  Tanya  Coventry;  left  to  right  The  Movado 
Group's  Efraim  Grinberg  and  Baume  &  Mercier's  Maggy  Siegel. 


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Editor  GRAYDON  CARTER 


Managing  Editor  <  HRIS  GARRETT 

Design  Director  david  Harris 

Executive  Literary  Editor  WAYNE  lawson 

Features  Editor  IANESARKIN 

Senior  Articles  Editors  DOUGLAS  STUMPS  aimi.l  bell,  bruce  handy 

Editor-at-Large  matf  tyrnauer 

Legal  Affairs  Editor  R0BER1  walsh    Senior  Editor  ned  zeman 

Fashion  Director  Elizabeth  saltzman    Photography  Director  susan  white 

Director  of  Special  Projects  sara  marks 

Assistant  Managing  Editor  ellen  kiell 

Art  Director  GREGORY  mastrianni 

London  Editor  henry  porter    West  Coast  Editor  krista  smith 

Special  Correspondents  dominick  dunne,  bob  colacello. 

MAUREEN  ORTH.  BRYAN  BURROUGH.  AMY  FINE  COLLINS 

Writer-at-Large  marie  brenner 

Special  Projects  Editor  reinaldo  herrera 

Copy  Editor  peter  devine    Research  Director  Patricia  j  singer    Photo  Editor  lisa  berman 

Photo  Research  Editor  jeannie  Rhodes    Vanities  Editor  riza  cruz 

Associate  Copy  Editor  allison  a.  merrill 

Research  Associates  olivia  j.  abel,  aliyah  baruchin,  Alexander  cohen, 

DAVID  KATZ.  DAMIEN  McCAFFERY,  GABRIEL  SANDERS 

Associate  Art  Directors  mimi  dutta.  julie  weiss    Designer  lisa  Kennedy 

Production  Managers  dina  amarito-dlshan,  martha  hurley 

Assistant  to  the  Editor  punch  hutton 

Editorial  Business  Manager  mersini  fialo 

Fashion  Editor  tina  skouras    Senior  Fashion  Market  Editor  mary  f.  braeunig 

U.K.  Associate  dana  brown    Paris  Editor  veronique  plazolles 

Art  Production  Manager  Christopher  george 

Copy  Production  Associate  Anderson  tepper    Associate  Style  Editor  kathryn  MacLeod 

Associate  Fashion  Editor  patricia  herrera 

Editorial  Promotions  Associates  darryl  brantley.  tim  Mchenry 

Editorial  Associates  Hilary  frank,  john  gillies,  kimberly  kessler    Features  Associate  carey  merkel 

Editorial  Assistants  ian  bascetta.  kate  ewald.  michael  hogan, 

LAURA  KANG,  TARAH  KENNEDY.  SIOBHAN  McDEVITT     Photo  Assistant  SARAH  CZELADNICKI 

Contributing  Projects  Associates  gaby  grekin,  Patrick  sheehan 

Contributing  Projects  Assistants  heather  fink,  marc  goodman,  Katharine  marx.  joaquin  Torres 

Contributing  Fashion  Assistants  nicole  Lepage,  bozhena  orekhova,  mary  louise  platt 

Editor,  Creative  Development  david  friend 


Contributing  Editors 

ROBERT  SAM  ANSON,  JUDY  BACHRACH.  LESLIE  BENNETTS.  CARL  BERNSTEIN. 
PETER  BISKIND,  BUZZ  BISSINGER,  HOWARD  BLUM.  PATRICIA  BOSWORTH.  ANDREW  COCKBURN,  LESLIE  COCKBURN. 

STEVEN  DALY.  BEATRICE  MONTI  DELLA  CORTE.  ALAN  DEUTSCHMAN,  RUPERT  EVERETT,  JULES  FEIFFER. 

BRUCE  FEIRSTEIN.  DAVID  HALBERSTAM.  EDWARD  W.  HAYES,  CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS,  A.  M.  HOMES,  LAURA  JACOBS. 

DAVID  KAMP.  EDWARD  KLEIN.  FRAN  LEBOWITZ,  MICHAEL  LUTIN,  DAVID  MARGOLICK, 

KIM  MASTERS,  BRUCE  McCALL.  ANNE  McNALLY,  RICHARD  MERKIN,  FREDERIC  MORTON,  DEE  DEE  MYERS.  ANDREW  NE 

BETSEY  OSBORNE,  ELISE  O'SHAUGHNESSY,  EVGENIA  PERETZ,  WILLIAM  PROCHNAU,  JOHN  RICHARDSON, 

LISA  ROBINSON,  ELISSA  SCHAPPELL,  KEVIN  SESSUMS,  GAIL  SHEEHY,  MICHAEL  SHNAYERSON,  ALEX  SHOUMATOFF. 

INGRID  SISCHY  SALLY  BEDELL  SMITH,  NICK  TOSCHES,  DIANE  VON  FURSTENBERG,  HEATHER  WATTS, 

GEORGE  WAYNE.  MARJORIE  WILLIAMS,  JAMES  WOLCOTT 


Contributing  Photographers 

ANNIE  LEIBOVITZ 

JONATHAN  BECKER,  HARRY  BENSON.  MICHEL  COMTE,  DAFYDD  JONES. 

HELMUT  NEWTON,  MICHAEL  O'NEILL.  HERB  RITTS.  SNOWDON,  BRUCE  WEBER,  FIROOZ  ZAHEDI 

Contributing  Artists  tim  SHEAFFER,  Robert  risko,  Hilary  knight 

Contributing  Editor  (Los  Angeles)  WENDY  stark  morrissey 

Contributing  Photography  Editor  sunheec.  grinnell 

Contributing  Stylists  kim  meehan.  nicoletta  santoro 


Director  of  Public  Relations  BE  i  ii  kseniak 

Deputy  Directors  of  Public  Relations  aninac.  mahoney,  SHARON  SCHI1 1 1  BR 

Deputy  Director  of  Public  Relations-Europe  anna  iiyng 


Editorial  Director  JAMES  TRUMAN 


V  A  N  I  t  Y     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


IERY  IN  YOUR  SKIN  TO. 


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VANITY  FAIIS 


MITCHELL  B.  FOX 

'ublishi  i  and  Vice  President 


Associate  Publisher  nan(  v  landsman  berger 

Advertising  Director  JILL  D  SEEUG 
Associate  Creative  Services  Director  JENNIFER  ORR  kllman 

Executive  Director,  Jewelry  and  Watch  linda  s.  kloner 

Executive  Director,  International  Fashion  and  Retail  tova  bonem 

Fashion  Director  NOREEN  delaney 

Beauty  Director  michelle  k.  Friedman 

Sales  Development  Manager  karen  landrljd 

Beauty  Manager  wendi  sanders  berger 

Entertainment  and  Spirits  Manager  jay  spaleta 

Account  Manager  geraldine  beatty 

Associate  Marketing  Director  SUZANNE  iromm    Marketing  Manager  daniella  r.  wells 

Executive  Assistant  to  the  Publisher  randy  j.  cunio 
Advertising  Services  Manager  tracey  k.  matson 


West  Coast  Manager 

Midwest  Manager                  San  Francisco  Manager 

RITA  MORAN  CHAVERS 

KELLY  SOUTER                                   RUTH  TOOKER 

Southwest  Manager 

S75  North  Michigan  Avenue                          50  Francisco  Street 

DONNA  CAMPBELL  IRONSIDE 

Chicago.  Illinois  60611                     San  Francisco.  California  94133 

6300  Wilshire  Boulevard 

Los  Angeles,  California  90048 

Detroit  Manager                      Southeast  and  Florida 

KELL1E  A   Mac 

\LOON                              BARBARA  BING 

3250  West  Big  Beaver  Road                 3384  Peachtree  Road.  Suite  825 

Suite  233 

Atlanta.  Georgia  30326 

Troy.  Michigan 

48084 

Hong  Kong 

Milan                                         Paris 

RONAN  GARDINER 

MIRELLA  DONINI                            SYLVIE  C.  DURLACH 

MATHEWS  &  ASSOCIATES  PTY.  LTD. 

MIAS.R.L.                                          S&R  MEDIA 

25th  Floor.  Causeway  Bay  Plaza  I 

Via  Hoepli,  3                                   32  Rue  de  Meudon 

489  Hennessy  Road,  Causeway  Bay.  Hong  Kong 

20121  Milan,  Italy                              92100  Boulogne,  France 

Promotion  Director  meridith  parks rotman 

Art  Director  colleen  meade 

Senior  Designer  lisa  martini  Salisbury 

Merchandising  Manager  sheehan  becker 

Special  Projects  Manager  chris  echaurre 

Promotion  Coordinator  tania  leclere 

Promotion  Coordinator/Copywriter  marjorie  mindell 

Promotion  Production  Coordinator  kerri  fallon 

Promotion  Assistant  diana  rayzman 

Advertising  Assistants  kristen  weiss, 

KATIE  FELTON.  ALISON  HERNON.  MEREDITH  KURLAND.  ANITA  TEGLASI.  LISA  BARLOW  (DETROIT). 
GRETCHEN  DRUMMOND  (CHICAGO).  DEANNA  LIENING  (SAN  FRANCISCO).  CHRISTINE  MOLNAR  (LOS  ANGELES) 

Vanity  Fair  is  published  by  The  Conde  Nast  Publications  Inc., 

Conde  Nast  Building,  350  Madison  Avenue,  New  York,  New  York  10017 

Chairman  s.  I  newhousejr. 

Deputy  Chairman-Editorial  Alexander  liberman 


President  and  CEO  STEVEN  T.  FLORIO 


Executive  Vice  Presidents  CHARLES  H.  TOWNSEND, 

CATHERINE  VISCARDI  JOHNSTON 

Executive  Vice  President- Chief  Financial  Officer  ERIC  C.  ANDERSON 

Senior  Vice  President-Consumer  Marketing  peter  a  armolir 

Senior  Vice  President-Manufacturing  and  Distribution  KEVIN  G,  hickey 

Senior  Vice  President-Market  Research  STEPHEN  BLACKER 

Senior  Vice  President-Human  Resources  JILL  HENDERSON  BRIGHT 

Senior  Vice  President-Corporate  Communications  MAURIE  PERL 

Vice  President-Systems  and  Technology  OWEN  B  WEEKLEY    Vice  President-Editorial  Business  Manager  LINDA  Rici| 

Vice  President-Planning  and  Development  I'RIMALIA  CHANG 

Vice  President-Marketing  and  Database  STEPHEN  M  JACOBY 

Vice  President-Corporate  Creative  Director  GARY  van  dis    Vice  President-Corporate  Sales  SUSAN  m  ANK 

Vice  President-Corporate  Sales  and  Marketing.  Detroit  PEGGY  daitch 

Vice  President -Creative  Marketing  CARA  DEOUI  PERI 

Vice  President-Advertising  Business  Manager  ROBERT  A  SILVERSTONl     Treasurer  DAVID  H  (  HI  MIDLIN 

Director  of  Advertising  Production  PHILIP  v  1 1  N  I  ini 
President-Asia-Pacilic  DIDIER  guerin 


38  VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     19 


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A  visionary  leap  from  Audi  and  Alcoa,  the 
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— ' 


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to  great  acclaii  i  thiv  /ears  earlier,  and  al- 
readj  it  was  considered  i  masterpiece  ofinter- 
a  book  for  the  ages.  Kubrick 
complimented  Herr  on  Dispatches.  "The  second 
thing  he  said  to  me  was  that  he  didn't  want  to 
make  a  movie  of  it,"  Kerr  recalls.  "He  wanted 
to  make  sure  1  wasn't  getting  any  ideas."  (This 
came  as  something  of  a  relief  to  Herr,  who  had  recently  finished 
working  with  Francis  Ford  Coppola  on  Apocalypse  Now.)  But  after 
three  years  of  picking  Herr's  brain  in  a  relentless  stream  of  epic- 
length  phone  dialogues— Did  Herr  know  of  any  good  Vietnam 
books,  something  with  a  story?  Was  he  familiar  with  Jung's  con- 
cept of  the  Shadow?  What  did  he  think  of  Traumnowlle  (the  1926 
novella  that  would  become  Kubrick's  last  film.  Eyes  Wide  Shut)l— 
Kubrick  asked  him  to  co-write  the  screenplay  for  Full  Metal  Jacket. 
"By  then,"  says  Herr,  "I  knew  I'd  been  working  for  Stanley  from  the 
moment  I  met  him." 

After  reading  Herr's  funny,  unsentimental,  and  thoroughly 
memorable  account  of  their  collaboration  and  19-year  friendship 
on  page  136,  you  understand  why  Kubrick  left  only  13  movies 
behind  when  he  died  last  March,  why  there's  no  padding  of 
small  pictures,  studio-inspired  mediocrities,  forgettable,  work-for- 
hire  amusements.  He  was  as  obsessed  as  his  legend  made  him 
out  to  be:  "Don't  think  just  because  you've  known  a  few  control 


i\ 


i 


freaks  in  your  time  that  you  can  imagine  whi 

A  ^       Stanley  Kubrick  was  like,"  Herr  writes.  But  He: 

^R  "        ilso  ;av\  the  devotion  dis<  ipline  and  intelligenc 

that  harnessed  the  obsession,  creating  "a  realil 

that  existed  far  beyond  any  question  of  am 

tj  gance  or  humility."  True  genius  is  nearly  impc 

¥  sible  to  explain;  with  this,  his  first  major  ma 

azine  article  in  two  decades,  Herr  has  capture 

Kubrick  the  way  he  captured  Vietnam,  in 

subtle,  indelible  portrait  that  drives  home  ju 

how  much  we  have  lost. 

It  could  be  argued  that  creating  a  great  re 
taurant  has  elements  in  common  with  makir 
a  great  movie.  Begin  with  a  dream.  Assemble 
talented  crew.  Find  the  right  location.  Not  for  nothing  does  foo 
critic  Mimi  Sheraton  liken  Joseph  H.  Baum,  the  man  who  create 
the  Four  Seasons  in  1959,  to  legendary  director  Cecil  B.  DeMil 
in  her  history  of  the  restaurant,  "Seasons  in  the  Sun,"  on  pag 
160.  Sheraton  was  part  of  the  culinary  team,  headed  by  chef , 
bert  Stockli  and  pastry  chef  Albert  Kumin,  that  Baum  assemble 
to  fulfill  his  vision  for  the  first  truly  contemporary  America 
restaurant.  The  location:  New  York's  Seagram  Building,  designe 
by  Mies  van  der  Rohe  and  Philip  Johnson.  Forty  years  later,  tl 
restaurant's  current  managers  (and  part  owners),  Alex  von  Bidd< 
and  Julian  Niccolini,  shimmer  across  the  room,  seating  a  contin 
ous  all-star  cast  that  includes  Johnson,  Brooke  Astor,  Edgar  Bron 
man  (Sr.  and  Jr.),  Barbara  Walters,  Bill  Blass,  Sanford  Weill, 
Koch,  Mario  Cuomo,  Diane  Sawyer,  and  Barry  Diller,  amor 
many,  many  others.  Kubrick's  vision  will  live  on  in  the  films  he  cr 
ated.  Baum's  will  live  on  in  a  restaurant  that  continues  to  be  tl 
gold  standard  of  big-time  power  spots.       — GRAYDON  CARTE 


Norton  Anthology 


ON  THE  COVER 
Edward  Norton  wears  a 
shirt  and  sweater-vest 
by  Helmut  Lang.  Pants 
by  Polo  Jeans  Co. 
Ralph  Lauren.  Shoes  by 
Salvatore  Ferragamo. 
Hair  by  Max  Pinnell. 
Grooming  by  Jorge  Serio. 
Grooming  products 
from  Polo  Sport  Ralph 
Lauren.  Props  styled 
by  Stefan  Beckman. 
Styled  by  L'Wren  Scott. 
Photographed 
exclusively  for  V.F.  by 
Herb  Kilts. 


Edward  Norton, 
who  stars  with  Brad  Pitt 
in  David  Fincher's 
upcoming  Fight  Club, 
tells  Peter  Biskind 
on  page  128  that  he 
considers  the  film 
a  Gen  X  call  to 
arms.  Norton  was 
photographed  in  the 
Alder  Mansion, 
Yonkers,  New  York, 
May  15,  1999. 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST      19 


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David  Seidner 


19  57-19  99 

David  Seidner  was  17  and  in  a  hurry  when  he  left  Los  Angeles  for  Paris,  where 
he  immersed  himself  in  French,  Italian,  and  German,  art  history  and  literature,  and 
the  scene  at  Qub  Sept.  At  19  he  photographed  his  first  magazine  cover;  at  21  he  had 
his  first  one-man  exhibition,  at  La  Remise  du  Pare  gallery,  and  signed  an  advertising 
contract  with  the  House  of  Yves  Saint  Laurent.  Over  the  next  20  years,  his  work— 
which  drew  on  the  past  to  illuminate  the  present— would  be  shown  at  the  Whitney 
Museum  of  American  Art,  the  Pompidou  Center,  and  the  former  Los  Angeles  Institute 
of  Contemporary  Art,  be  published  in  Vanity  Fair,  French  and  Italian  Vogue,  Harper's 
Bazaar,  and  Tire  New  York  Times  Magazine,  and  be  used  in  advertising  campaigns 
for  Claude  Montana,  John  Galliano,  and  Bill  Blass  (modeled  by  opera  singer  Jessye 
Norman).  Precocious  and  wise,  sexual  and  intellectual,  radical  and  social,  Seidner  was 
as  comfortable,  and  accurate,  quoting  Baudelaire  on  aesthetics  as  he  was  describing 
the  jewelry  of  his  patroness,  Chantal  Miller,  the  wife  of  duty-free  tycoon  Robert  Miller. 
His  1995  color  photographs  for  V.F.  of  the  Millers'  daughters— Pia  Getty,  Marie-Chantal 
of  Greece,  and  Alexandra  von  Fiirstenberg— evoked  Velasquez,  Ingres,  and  Boldini, 
just  as  the  luminous  black-and-white  portraits  of  contemporary  artists  he  showed  at  the 
Robert  Miller  Gallery  in  New  York  in  1993  gave  Jasper  Johns,  Richard  Serra,  Ross 
Bleckner,  and  Philip  Taaffe  the  gravitas  of  Roman  emperors.  Seidner  s  last  works, 
photographs  of  orchids  done  in  Miami  Beach  this  winter  before  he  succumbed 
to  aids  in  June,  will  be  shown  at  the  Baldwin  Gallery  in  Aspen  this  month.  His  seventh 
and  eighth  books,  Portraits  and  Artists  at  Work,  will  be  published,  respectively,  by 
Assouline  in  October  and  by  Rizzoli  in  January.  Next  year.  La  Maison  Europeenne 
de  la  Photographie  in  Paris  will  mount  a  retrospective.  "David's  quest,"  says 
his  friend  and  co-executor  Robert  McElroy,  "was  to  experience  beauty  and  then 
define  it  for  himself  in  his  work  "  —bob  colacello 

CONTINUED   ON    PAOl     It 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     19V 


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/iVi^H'^'A,  * 


December  31,  1999 
11:59  p.m. 

for  a  single  moment 

an  entire  civilization  will 

see  the  glass  nail  lull. 


Waterford 


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(ionlrihulors 


•  \  1 1  \  i  in 


Aftei  reading  Dispatches,  Michael  Herr's  brilliant 

1977  book  on  the  Vietnam  War,  Francis 

I  orcl  Coppola  hired  him  to  write  the 

narration  lor  Apocalypse  Now.  lour  years 

later.  Hen  was  asked  by  Stanley  Kubrick  to 

co-write  Full  Metal  Jacket    and  the  two 

became  lifelong  friends.  ••Stanley  had  a  lot 

of  respect  for  the  formalities  [of  filmmaking] 

but  none  for  the  formula,"  Herr  says  of  the 

late  director,  whom  he  commemorates  in 

this  issue.  "That's  what  he  wanted  to  change. 

His  films  were  personal  films."  For  Herr, 

a  cult  figure  among  writers,  this  is  his  first 

major  magazine  article  in  two  decades. 


^ 


For  as  long  as  she  has  been  covering  politics, 
contributing  editor  Marjorie  Williams  has  heard 
people  talk  about  former  Democratic  Party 
fund-raiser  Patricia  Duff,  who  is  now  locked 
in  a  custody  battle  with  Ronald  Perelman  and 
whom  she  profiles  on  page  152.  "I  remember 
James  Carville  doing  a  riff  about  going  to 
L.A.  with  Clinton  and  sittiri  with  Patricia  Duff 
Meaavoy"  Williams  says.  But  as  the  courtroom^ 
spectacle  wears  on,  Duff,  as  one  source 
described  it  to  Williams,  now  seems  stuck  in 
"a  sort  of  praying-mantis  dance  to  the  death." 


According  to  contributing  editor  James  Wolcott, 

the  controversy  surrounding  Brill's  Content  is  less 

about  its  content  than  about  founder  Steven  Brills 

approach.  "Everyone  has  a  special  interest, 

but  Brill's  Content  wants  to  think  it's  above  that," 

says  Wolcott,  who  assesses  the  self-appointed 

media-watchdog  journal  on  page  52.  Initially  an 

enthusiastic  subscriber  to  the  magazine,  Wolcott  feels 

that  Brill  has  "too  much  pride  and  purpose 

invested"  in  the  project  to  abandon  it.  As  for  the 

members  of  the  media  establishment,  Wolcott  says, 

"I  think  they're  just  hoping  he'll  go  away." 


Long  before  joining  Tlie  New  York  Times,  where 
she  was  the  restaurant  critic  between  1976  and  1984, 
Mimi  Sheraton  was  a  food  researcher  on  the  team  that 
created  the  Four  Seasons,  New  York's  power-lunch  mecca, 
which  turns  40  this  year.  "As  a  budding  food  writer, 
1  thought,  This  is  a  great  opportunity  to  taste  all  kinds  of] 
things.  It  turned  out  to  be  more  than  I  expected  just 
because  everybody  was  sort  of  insane— blissfully  insane." 
Her  recollection  of  the  restaurant's  food-mad  personalities! 
and  gastronomic  achievements  begins  on  page  160. 


For  contributing  editor  Buzz  Bissinger,  investigating  the  1982 

murder  conviction  of  former  Black  Panther  Mumia  Abu-Jamal 

for  this  issue  was  something  of  a  return  to  his  beginnings. 

Bissinger's  first  job  was  as  a  crime  reporter  at  The  Ledger-Star 

in  Norfolk,  Virginia.  "There  was  a  murder  case  in  which 

a  husband  killed  his  wife  that  was  quite  sensational," 

Bissinger  recalls.  "But  the  really  big  crime  story  was  that 

the  police  arrested  a  bunny  once.  So  I've  either  come  a 

long  way  or  a  short  way— I'm  not  sure  which." 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


1999  Datek  Online  Brokerage  Services  Corp.,  Member  NASD/SIPC.   www.datek.com 


LITTLE  BOYS  LOST 


tophei 
li(  ilatc  look  at 
and  Illinois  ["Old 
i  nough  to  I>  ie, '  fune],  i  Unfortunately 
it  should  be  no  surprise  that  we  exe- 
cute our  children,  and  that  these  chil- 
dren, In  and  largo,  have  sulk-red 
from  mental  illness,  abuse,  drug 
addiction,  or  neglect.  As  a  nation 
we  should  he  outraged.  Instead, 
the  growing  sentiment  seems  to 
be  that  it  doesn't  matter  if  an  in- 
nocent person  is  put  to  death  as 
long  as,  along  the  way,  someone 
who  is  guilty  is  executed  as  well. 
Can  our  collective  thirst  for  re- 
venge possibly  be  worth  the  life 
ol'  even  one  innocent  person? 

In  the  wake  of  the  Littleton, 
Colorado,  school  shootings,  it  has 
become  evident  that  kids  are  fac- 
ing many  negative  influences  these 
days,  and  that  there  is  little  guid- 
ance from  parents  and  other 
adult  role  models.  We  force  chil- 
dren to  make  decisions  they  are 
not  mature  enough  to  make.  Our 
leaders  and  Hollywood  teach  them 
that  an  appropriate  response  to 
not  getting  their  way  is  violence, 
not  negotiation.  By  neglecting  our 
kids  today,  we  set  them  up  for 
failure,  and  possibly  death  row, 
tomorrow. 

ELIZABETH  BUCHANAN 
Milton,  Massachusetts 

WHILE  CHRISTOPHER  HITCHENS 
was  not  a  fan  of  Sean  Sellers,  the 
youth  recently  executed  for  murder- 
ing his  mother,  Vonda  Bellofatto, 
and  stepfather,  Paul  Bellofatto,  I  was 
offended  by  his  depiction  of  the  Sel- 
lers family.  Particularly  offensive  was 
his  saying  that  the  Sellers  home  was 
"festooned  with  deadly  weapons" 
and  his  statement  regarding  "the  ed- 
ucational and  cultural  level"  of  the 
family. 

I  was  married  to  Paul  Bellofatto 
for  13  years,  and  I  raised  his  two 
children.  The  years  we  were  married 
were  years  of  turmoil  and  unrest  with 
the  Vietnam  War  raging.  We  were  in- 
deed an  army  family.  But  at  no  time  do 
I  remember  having  any  weapons  "fes- 
tooned" in  my  home  or  anyplace  else. 
In  fact,  Paul  Bellofatto  did  not  own  a 
working  weapon  during  the  years  we 
were  married.  The  weapon  Sellers  used 


to  kill  his  mother  and  stepfather  was 
kept  in  the  Bellofatto  bedroom  for  Von- 
da Bellolalto's  security.  Obviously  she 
never  suspected  that  she  would  need 
protection  from  her  only  child. 
As  to  the  question  of  the  family's  ed- 


I  I  IND  II  DISTURBING  that  when  we 
finally  see  that  rare  image  of  a  black  per- 
son in  the  pages  of  Vanity  Fair  it's  a  po- 
lice mug  shot  blown  up  on  an  opening 
page,  as  demonstrated  in  your  June  arti- 
cle "Old  Enough  to  Die."  Subtle  racism 
is  still  racism.  When  a  regular 
story  needs  to  be  illustrated,  you 
shy  away  from  photographs 
of  black  people;  when  it's  a 
crime  story,  however,  there's 
no  hesitation  whatsoever  about 
picturing  a  black  person.  I  re- 
alize that  the  placement  of  the 
young  murderer  George  Stin- 
ney  on  the  opener  was  due  to 
his  being  the  first  mentioned  in 
the  story.  Still,  I  think  your  edi- 
tors should  be  more  aware  of 
how  you  are  portraying  black 
America.  God  forbid  50  years 
from  now  someone  unearths 
old  Vanity  Fairs  and  other  up- 
scale magazines.  What  kind  of 
portrait  would  they  have  of 
blacks?  A  very  sad  one  indeed. 

DUANE  THOMAS 
Brooklyn,  New  York 


The  Name  of  the  Star 


WHILE  I  COMMEND  Ned  Zeman's  attempt  in  his 
profile  to  highlight  the  inaccuracies  in  tabloid  jour- 
nalism ["Canoodling  with  Julia,"  June],  I  found 
ronic  that  he  didn't  check  for  accuracy  before 
mrgitating  many  of  the  same  rumors  he  con- 
ins.  I've  never  made  a  habit  of  commenting  on 
:curacies  written  about  me,  and  I  hesitate  even 
However,  I  am  compelled  to  correct  some- 
ig,  on  behalf  of  my  family.  My  late  father  was 
born  Walter  Roberts,  not  Walter  Motes,  and  his 
ldren  carry  the  name  proudly. 

JULIA  ROBERTS 

New  York,  New  York 


ucational  and  cultural  level,  Paul  Bello- 
fatto's  natural  children  both  have  col- 
lege degrees  and  have  never  suffered 
from  any  socioeconomic  oppression.  And 
Sean  Sellers  himself  was  of  very  high 
intelligence  and  was  expected  to  con- 
tinue on  to  college. 

LUELLA  M.  LEED 
Lawton,  Oklahoma 


A  Queen's  Courage 


THANK  YOU  FOR  Leslie  Ben- 
netts's  moving  and  perceptive 
profile  of  Her  Majesty  Noor 
al-Hussein,  the  Queen  Mother 
of  Jordan  ["Losing  Her  King," 
June].  I  have  admired  the 
queen  for  many  years,  both 
for  her  humanitarian  efforts 
and  for  her  commitment  to 
her  role  in  Jordan.  Since  the 
death  of  King  Hussein,  it  has 
become  clear  just  how  chal- 
lenging, contentious,  and  often 
painful  that  role  has  been. 
Queen  Noor's  stoic  and  digni- 
fied presence  throughout  King 
Hussein's  illness  and  her  obei- 
sance during  his  funeral  and 
1  the  mourning  period  were 
heartbreaking  to  see.  It  was  a  testament  to 
her  courage  that  in  the  midst  of  her  enor- 
mous personal  loss  she  put  a  nation's  grief 
first,  receiving  mourners  day  after  day.  It  is 
a  great  shame  that  she  has  been  vilified  by 
some  factions  in  Jordan  for  so  long. 

IN(iA  WALTON 
Melbourne,  Australia 


CON  I  I  N  II  I-  I)    ON     I'Ali  I 


VANITY     F  A  I 


AUGUST      1999 


Ma* 

Ma* 

*< 

nan 

evian 

^*fe.l      i 

™  —  _- 

_ 

Crime  and 


Ford-Tough 


iiii' 


1 1. Dii- 
tor  Au- 

;'  01    and 

1    June], 

I  find  n  ■■  i  >  »s1  out- 

spokei  is  former  British 

prin  f  t    I  hatcher. 

Pinochi  rtradition  and  trial 

on  charges  ol  torture  and  terrorism, 
while  v  1 1 >  Thatcher  insists  he  be  re- 
i  forthwith. 
During  the  hunger  strikes  of  1981, 
hi  ,n  I  Nationalists  starved  to  death 
in  an  attempt  to  achieve  political- 
prisoner  status.  Mrs.  Thatcher's  man- 
tra at  the  time  was  "Crime  is  crime 
is  crime."  and  she  refused  to  engage 
in  any  dialogue  with  the  prisoners. 
Yet  she  condones  the  acts  of  Pino- 
chet, a  man  responsible  for  thou- 
sands of  deaths  and  disappearances 
over  his  17-year  rule. 

LIZ  KERR 

Jenkintown,  Pennsylvania 

AS  A  SURVIVOR  of  Pinochet's  coup 
d'etat,  I  was  disturbed  by  two  things 
in  Judy  Bachrach's  article.  First,  the 


BRYAN  BURROUGHS  STORY  "Gucci  and 
Goliath"  [July]  contains  two  misquotes  of 
my  comments  to  Burrough.  The  first,  re- 
garding Bernard  Arnault's  designers,  oc- 
curs on  pare   144:  "His  designers,  you 

know,  they're  great  designers don't  get 

me  wrong  but  they  don't  have  a  vision. 
Their  vision  is  not  visible  in  the  bou- 
tiques'' What  I  actually  said  was:  "His 
designers,  you  know,  they  are  great  de- 
signers—they have  a  vision,  but  their  vision 
is  not  visible  in  the  boutiques." 

The  second  and  more  serious  misquote 
appears  on  page  145.  Burrough  writes, 
"But  Pinault's  greatest  asset,  as  Ford  saw 
it,  was  his  ignorance.  'That  was  the  key 
thing:  He  knew  nothing!'  Ford  recalls, 
smiling.  'We  didn't  need  his  [fashion]  ex- 
pertise. We  needed  his  money.'"  What  I 
said  was:  "Francois  knew  nothing  about 
the  fashion  business."  This  misquote,  cou- 
pled with  Burrough's  use  of  the  word  "ig- 
norance" to  describe  my  view  of  Francois 
Pinault,  is  completely  inaccurate,  as  I  hold 
Pinault  in  the  highest  regard. 

TOM  FORD 
Paris,  France 


hile  there  does  exist  a  certain  unwritten  code 
among  seasoned  travelers  that  discoveries  are  meant  to 
be  shared,  there  are  times  when  this  code  is  put  to  a  test.  Such  as 
those  times,  for  example,  when  the  discovery  is  deemed  too  special 
to   share    with    even        CHANCES  ARE  YOU  WON'T   HEAR   ABOUT 
the  most  close-mouthed  US   THROUGH   WORD  OF   MOUTH. 

of  friends.  This  may  very  well  be  the  case  with  Casa  Del  Mar. 

With  its  glorious  ocean  views  and  overall  sense  of  casual 
European  elegance,  you  too  may  come  to  the  most  uncharitable 
conclusion  that  even  friendship  has  its  limits.  For  more  information 
J  "ThfJfadingHoielsofthfWforld  j  or  rescr\  ations,  please  call  your  travel 
agent  or  1-800-898-6999.  Or  visit  us  at  www.hocelcasadelmar.com. 
Opening  Late  Summer  1999 


CASA  DEL  MAR 


author's  failure  to  mention  that  t 
U.S.  had  been  involved  in  orchestr 
ing  the  coup  itself.  And,  second,  h 
audacity  in  comparing  Pinochet 
dictator  who  became  a  head  of  stati 
by  killing  people  and  placing  himsej 
in  power,  to  democratically  electei 
heads  of  state.  Ms.  Bachrach  writes 
"If  an  ex-head  of  state  is  arrested 
who  is  safe?  President  Clinton  afte 
the  bombing  of  Belgrade?"  This  is 
ridiculous  comment  given  the  fad 
that  Pinochet  was  a  dictator,  not 
democratically  elected  president. 

ALEJANDRA  AGUIRR] 
Vancouver,  British  Columbi 

I  AM  PLEASED  to  see  the  witherin] 
away  of  Pinochet's  immunity.  As  hi 
day  of  reckoning  approaches,  let  th 
be  a  warning  to  all  Fascist  tyrants 
including  Slobodan  Milosevic  of  Yi 
goslavia,  Nawaz  Sharif  of  Pakistan 
and  Saddam  Hussein  of  Iraq. 

YUSUF  NASRULLAI 
London,  Englan 


Money  Talks 


YOUR  PROFILE  of  Jim  Crame 
["Wild  on  TheStreet.com,"  by  Suzar 
na  Andrews,  June]  suggests  that  I  with 
drew  from  Cramer's  fund  when  Mart 
Peretz  did.  I'm  sorry  that  I  gave  your  r< 
porter  that  impression.  The  amount  ir 
volved  is  small  for  either  of  them  but  bi 
for  me,  and  it  is  still  entrusted  to  Jim' 
care.  I  have  Marty  to  thank  for  gettin 
me  in,  and  he  never  suggested  that 
should  follow  him  out.  Thanks. 

MICHAEL  KINSLE 

Editor,  Slat 

Redmond,  Washingto 


CORRECTION:  In  the  caption  on  page  104  oftk 
July  issue,  Bai  Ling  andDeanna  Yusoff,from  tl 
movie  Anna  and  the  King,  are  misidentified.  B, 
Ling  is  being  "whispered  to"  by  Deanna  Yusoff. 


Letters  to  the  editor  should  be  sent  with  th 
writer's  name,  address,  and  daytime  phone  nurr 
ber  to:  Vanity  Fair,  350  Madison  Avenue,  Nc 
York,  New  York  10017.  Address  electronic  ma 
to  vfmail@vf.com.  The  magazine  reserves  th 
right  to  edit  submissions,  which  may  be  put 
lished  or  otherwise  used  in  any  medium.  All  sul 
missions  become  the  property  of  Vanity  Fair 


Those  submitting  manuscripts,  photograph; 
artwork,  or  other  material  to  Vanity  Fair  fc 
consideration  should  not  send  originals  unles 
requested  in  writing  to  do  so  by  Vanity  Fair.  A 
unsolicited  materials  must  be  accompanied  b 
a  self-addressed  overnight-delivery  envclopt 
postage  paid.  However,  Vanity  Fair  is  not  r 
sponsible  for  unsolicited  submissions. 


VANITY     F  A  I 


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NEW    YORK    51     EAST 
BEVERLY    HIDLS    313    NX  i 
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L     HARBOUR     9700     COLLINS     AVENU 

SAN    FRANCISCO    216    STOCKTON    STREE 

BERGDORF     GOODMAN 


\\  iili  his  year-old 
media-watchdog  magazine, 
Steven  Brill  wants  to  cap 
his  maverick  career  by 
making  other  journalists 
toe  the  line.  But  while  his 
crusade  started  with  a 
bang,  Brills  Content  has 
lapsed  into  a  bland 
and  wordy  whimper 


less  allies  can  be  divid- 
ed into  two  categories. 
(O.K.,  they  can  be  di- 
vided  into   more   than 
two  categories,  but  hu- 
mor me.)  The  first  group 
might  be  called  the  pa- 
rade sweepers.  Whenev- 
er a  new  carnival  rolls 
into  town— be  it  the  O.  J. 
Simpson  trial,  the  Lorena 
Bobbitt  case,  the  Jon- 
Benet  Ramsey  murder,  the  Monica  Lew- 
insky scandal— they  dutifully  bring  up 
the  rear,  trailing  the  elephants  and  hold- 
ing their  noses.  Their  job  is  to  clean  up 
the  mess  their  tabloid  cousins  leave  be- 
hind and  put  the  gaudy  spectacle  into  A 
Larger  Perspective,  drawing  important 
lessons  which  are  instantly  forgotten  once 
the  next  freak  show  lurches  in.  They're 
like  the  Council  of  Watchers  on  Buffy  the 
Vampire  Slayer,  trying  futilely  to  plug  up 
the  Hellmouth.  The  pet  words  in  their  cat- 
echism are  "fairness,"  "balance,"  "account- 
ability," "the  public's  right  to  know,"  "glitz" 
(bad),  "pandering"  (worse),  and  "chilling 
effect"  (scary),  and  the  question  they  ask 
like  a  haunting  refrain  is  "Have  the  media 
gone  too  far  this  time?"  The  answer,  deliv- 
ered with  a  weary  surgeon's  shake  of  the 
head,  is  always  "Yes."  For  them,  it's  been 
downhill  ever  since  Edward  R.  Mur- 
row  smoked  his  last  cigarette.  The 
principal  outlets  for  this  jury  of 
sober-minded  social  improvers 
are  the  Columbia  Journalism 
Review,  Media  Studies  Jour- 
nal, American  Journalism 
Review,  the  Pew  Center  for 
Civic  Journalism,  the  Proj- 
ect for  Excellence  in  Jour- 
nalism, Terence  Smith's 
roundtable  segments  on 
PBS's  Vw  NewsHour  with 
Jim  Lehrer,  and  CNN's 
Reliable  Sources,  featur- 
ing Howard  Kurtz  of 
The  Washington  Post 
^       and  Bernard  Kalb, 
whose  swivel  hips 
put  a  spin  on  every 
hot-air  question.  To 

CONTINUl  I)   ON 
PAGE    >7 


CONTENT  PROVIDER 

Steven  Brill,  founder  and 

editor  of  Brill's  Content, 

which  this  month  marks  its 

first  anniversary. 


AUGUST     1999 


collection 


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Atlanta  -  Bal  Harbour  -  Beverly  Hills  -  Boca  Raton  -  Boston  -  Chevy  Chase  -  Chicago  -  Dallas  -  Honolulu  -  Houston  -  La  Jolla 
Las  Vegas  -  Montreal  -  New  York  -  Palm  Beach  -  San  Francisco  -  Seattle  -  South  Coast  Plaza  -  St.  Louis  -  Toronto  -  Troy  -  Vancouver 
Aruba  -  Cancun  -  Cayman  -  Freeport  -  Nassau  -  Paradise  Island  -  San  |uan  -  St.  Barthelmy  -  St.  Martin  -  St.  Thomas 

1-800-CARTIER 


intinubd  prom  paoi  sj  these  chewers  of 
old  gum,  there  is  no  topic  or  issue  so  in- 
cendiary, so  divisive,  that  it  can't  be  put  to 
sleep  by  a  panel  discussion,  preferably  with 
C'-span  cameras  present. 

The  second  group  of  press  critics  are  the 
peanut  gallery.  They  take  a  racetrack 
view  of  the  press's  colorful  excesses. 
They  don't  mind  a  little  spilled  ink.  Where 
the  parade  sweepers  grumble  about  falling 
standards  and  cheap  sensationalism,  the 
peanut  gallery  rares  back  and  enjoys  the 
show.  They  consider  scandal  a  contact 
sport,  not  a  consensus-building  exercise. 
Their  souls  aren't  troubled  by  media  antics, 
because  they  see  mankind  itself  as  vain, 
self-deluded,  and  full  of  folly  as  the  stock 
characters  in  Roman  satire.  To  them,  the 


sniper's  nest  of  the  freelance  author  and 
the  executive  office  of  the  editor  in  chief, 
making  him  the  prime  candidate  to  raise 
press  criticism  to  the  power  of  a  counter- 
institution.  Like  Giuliani,  he  rides  rough- 
shod over  doubters.  Raised  in  a  hard-knock 
neighborhood  in  Queens,  Brill  decided  he 
wanted  to  attend  a  private  school  like  his 
hero  President  Kennedy,  and  was  accepted 
by  the  Deerfield  Academy  in  Massachu- 
setts. According  to  a  profile  in  U.S.  News  & 
World  Report,  "In  classrooms  filled  with 
wealthy  WASPs,  Brill  was  a  Jewish  schol- 
arship kid  with  a  bad  stuttering  problem, 
a  Queens  accent,  and— for  the  first  few 
months— mediocre  grades."  When  he  told 
a  group  of  classmates  that  he  wanted  to  go 
to  Harvard  or  Yale  like  them,  they  laughed, 
"it  made  me  feel  terrible,'  he  recalls.  To 


erage  of  ongoing  trials  and  analyses  of  ju- 
dicial decisions  whose  near  flatline  rat- 
ings were  given  a  major  boost  by  the  O.  J. 
Simpson  melodrama.  A  number  of  Court 
TV  personalities  were  snatched  by  the  net- 
works (most  notably  Cynthia  McFadden  to 
ABC),  and  some  of  the  juicier  trials  it  cov- 
ered were  repackaged  as  NBC  Dateline 
specials,  but  the  multiple  ownership  of 
Court  TV  by  Time  Warner,  NBC,  and 
Liberty  Media  was  a  Rube  Goldberg  con- 
traption that  collapsed  on  Brill.  In  1997, 
after  a  protracted  power  struggle  with  his 
partners,  he  lost  control  of  American  Law- 
yer Media. 

With  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  Court 
TV  to  Time  Warner,  Brill  was  able  to  fund 
his  latest  project,  a  critique  of  the  media 
industry  that  would  bear  his  name  and 


Brill  made  his  fortune  breaking  the  rules,  only  to  seek  to  enshrine  his  own  honor  code. 


daily  press  isn't  a  lighthouse  beacon  of 
truth  but  a  roving  spotlight  on  the  human 
comedy,  of  which  the  press  itself  is  a  part. 
The  peanut  gallery  consists  of  freewheeling 
mavericks  such  as  H.  L.  Mencken,  Tlie 
New  Yorker's  A.  J.  Liebling  (whose  "Way- 
ward Press"  column  could  make  even  a 
contributor's  photo  a  baroque  subject:  "An- 
other landmark  missing  from  the  Journal- 
American  was  Westbrook  Pegler's  Rhada- 
manthine  face,  with  eyebrows  fiercer  than 
Hussars'  mustaches"),  Nora  Ephron  in  her 
Esquire  days,  Alexander  Cockburn,  who 
did  "Press  Clips"  for  The  Village  Voice, 
and  his  successor,  Geoffrey  Stokes.  To 
these  writers,  the  parade  sweepers  are 
naive  paper-pushers.  In  a  1927  essay  called 
"Journalism  in  America,"  Mencken  noted 
"the  fantastic  codes  of  ethics  that  issue 
from  embattled  professors  of  journalism  in 
the  great  rolling-mills  of  learning,  and  from 
editorial  associations  in  the  cow  States," 
declaring:  "In  such  codes,  I  am  sorry  to 
have  to  repeat,  I  take  no  stock.  Most  of 
them  are  the  handiwork  of  journalists  of 
no  professional  importance  whatever,  and, 
what  is  worse,  of  no  apparent  sense."  Giv- 
en such  differences  in  outlook  and  tem- 
perament, could  anyone  bridge  the  gap  be- 
tween these  two  camps  of  press  critics— 
between  the  idealistic  wonks  and  the  world- 
ly mavericks? 

Enter  Steven  Brill,  founder  and  chairman 
of  Brill's  Content  and  self-made  super- 
man. A  rebel  with  a  cause,  Brill  has 
demonstrated  that  he  can  build  and  mar- 
shal an  organization  that  adds  muscle  to 
his  individual  zeal.  The  Rudy  Giuliani  of 
the  print  trade,  he  has  occupied  both  the 


show  them,  he  cruised  through  Yale  with 
straight  As,  establishing  a  pattern  that 
would  be  repeated:  Brill  would  be  the  pro- 
fessional outsider  who  bested  privileged 
peers  on  their  own  terms."  The  competi- 
tive streak  as  a  species  of  class  warfare. 

Despite  taking  his  degree  at  Yale  Law 
School,  where  his  fellow  students  included 
Clarence  Thomas,  Brill  has  never  prac- 
ticed law,  finding  journalism  a  guttier  are- 
na. At  the  age  of  25,  he  caused  a  stir  with 
"Jimmy  Carter's  Pathetic  Lies,"  a  muck- 
raking article  for  Harper's  that  debunked 
the  future  president  as  a  pious  hypocrite. 
In  his  late  20s  he  wrote  a  history  of  the 
Teamsters  union,  not  a  task  for  the  lily- 
livered.  Instead  of  continuing  as  a  lone 
muckraker,  Brill  saw  an  opportunity  to 
cover  the  legal  sphere  the  way  Variety 
covers  showbiz.  The  result,  in  1979,  was 
The  American  Lawyer,  a  crossover  success 
which  appealed  to  legal  insiders  and  by- 
standers alike,  four  times  winning  a  Na- 
tional Magazine  Award.  Not  only  did  the 
magazine's  investigative  pieces  have  previ- 
ously closed-world  law  firms  dodging  and 
defending  themselves,  they  were  capable 
of  altering  media  perceptions  and  shifting 
public  opinion.  Stuart  Taylor's  article  cham- 
pioning the  validity  of  Paula  Jones's  sexual- 
harassment  claim  against  Bill  Clinton 
marked  a  major  turnaround  in  sentiment 
regarding  the  case.  A  boss  given  to  legen- 
dary tantrums  and  scathing  put-downs 
("Have  you  ever  considered  suicide?"  he 
might  scribble  on  a  contributor's  copy), 
Brill  instilled  fear  and  hero  worship  in  his 
underlings.  From  TJie  American  Lawyer 
Brill  branched  out  into  cable  in  1991,  cre- 
ating Court  TV,  a  channel  devoted  to  cov- 


become  his  assault  vehicle,  Brill's  Content. 
(His  other  investors  included  cable  mogul 
Barry  Diller,  real-estater  Howard  Milstein, 
and  Wall  Street  investor  Lester  Pollack.) 
What  Tlie  American  Lawyer  did  to  the  le- 
gal aristocracy.  Brill's  Content  would  do  to 
the  media  lords  of  the  New  Establish- 
ment. He  recruited  a  team  of  writers  and 
editors  who  would  serve  as  his  truth 
squad,  among  them  Michael  Kramer,  for- 
merly of  New  York  and  Time,  and  Lome 
Manly,  from  Tlie  New  York  Observer.  But 
make  no  mistake,  the  magazine  would 
bear  one  man's  boot  print.  Like  Eliot 
Ness,  he  would  bust  the  media  elite's 
hypocrisies  as  if  they  were  bootleg  bar- 
rels. He  would  turn  the  tables  on  pesky 
reporters  and  see  how  they  liked  the  third 
degree.  As  one  source  told  Jennet  Conant 
(Vanity  Fair,  August  1997),  "Steve  Brill 
just  wants  to  kick  some  ass."  A  fearless 
enforcer,  a  hard-nosed  district  attorney, 
and  a  hanging  judge  rolled  into  one,  Brill 
would  apprehend,  indict,  and  convict 
journalistic  perps,  and  then  serve  as  the 
court  of  appeals  when  they  responded 
with  their  weaselly  letters  of  complaint. 
Some  wondered:  Had  Brill  gotten  too  big 
for  his  suspenders? 

Kiven  the  pre-publication  drumbeat  for 
Brill's  Content,  many  believed  the  mag- 
azine couldn't  live  up  to  its  hype.  They 
were  mistaken.  The  first  issue  of  Brill's  Con- 
tent (July-August  1998)  splashed  a  media- 
gang-bang  shot  of  Special  Prosecutor  Ken- 
neth Starr  on  the  cover  to  illustrate  Brill's 
own  blockbuster  /'accuse.  "Pressgate."  A 
detective  look  at  the  porous  relationship 
between  Starr's  office  and  certain  favored 


AUGUST     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


Ol    how    luaisaN 

ted  eno  igh 

arti(  l<  had 

1 1. ii isc  swee  epic  despite 

ongesti< p  tri]  ped  the 

■  iding  oil'  go  mi  'i\  pr<  ttj  face  •  putations 
that  th(  resuli      s  a  fl  irrj  "i  furious  bare 
ling  in        at    prot(  •   and  counter- 
charges came  >.>>i  <>n!>  from  Stan  s  office 
but  also  no  i  those  defending  the  journal- 
ists accused  of  being  lapdogs  and  accesso- 
ry leakers    Along  with  fac- 
tual disputes  (Stan's  office 
issued  a  magisterially  pieky 
rebuttal  worthy  of  a  William 
Gaddis  novel    "Your  selec- 
tion of  the  parameters  of 
your  Nexis  search  was  ap- 
parently intended  to  prove 
your  point").  Brill's  nonpar- 
tisanship  was  questioned  af- 
ter it  was  revealed  he  had 
donated  money  to  the  Dem- 
ocratic Party.  He  was  grilled 
to  a  toasty  brown  on  NBC's 
Meet  the  Press  by  Tim  Russert, 
who  repeated  some  of  the 
complaints  of  Brill's  victims  and 
asked,  "Rather  a  dubious  debut  for  a  so- 
called  media  watchdog,  wouldn't  you  say?" 
Yet  for  all  its  holes  and  flaws,  "Pressgate" 
did  what  Brill  hoped  it  would  do— be- 
come Topic  A  on  talk  radio  and  put  his 
new  magazine  on  the  map.  (It  was  a  hot 
newsstand  seller.)  It  also  served  notice  on 
the  media  that  a  new  pair  of  eagle  eyes 
was  now  watching  their  every  move.  Rus- 


monic; 

TMWHT 


about  bad  people,  but  rather  a  maga/inc  di- 
rected at  a  problem  we  face  at  the  dawn  of 
the  new  century,  a  problem  of  unchecked 
power  among  a  group  of  extremely  impor- 
tant people  who  are  caught  up  in  a  race 
for  ratings  and  readership."  (There  are 
no  bad  people,  only  bad  problems.)  Ex- 
ercised over  Barbara  Walters's  interview 
with  Monica  Lewinsky,  Brill  began  another 
.olumn,  "We  all  know  that  we  shouldn't 
rubberneck  at  car  accidents, 
but  we  do.  We  want 
to  look  away,  but  we 
can't.   We  feel  bad, 
sometimes  even  physi- 
cally sick,  if  the  scene 
is  too  grotesque.  But  we 
find  ourselves  stealing  a 
glimpse  anyway."  Four 
sentences  to  reiterate  the 
same  obvious  point.  Brill 
then  went  on  to  christen  this 
phenomenon   "car-accident 
journalism,"  proving  he  can't 
even  coin  a  catchphrase  (it 
should  be  "car-crash  journal- 
ism," or  something  punchier). 
Wordiness  wends  through  the  whole 
magazine.  Calvin  Trillin's  column  "The 
Wry  Side,"  a  title  guaranteed  to  make  one 
want  to  remove  one's  appendix,  reads  like 
a  curmudgeon  rehearsing  his  one-liners  on 
the  putting  green.  Jon  Katz's  "The  Brows- 
er" column  is  full  of  refried  beans:  "A 
newspaper  story  recently  accused  me  of 
being  a  'Web  enthusiast,'  and  I  plead 
guilty.  I've  been  writing  on  and  about  the 


After  the  first  issue  of  Brill's  Content,  it  was  tricky  staving  off  a  sense  of  anticlimax. 


sert  and  the  reporters  on  Meet  the  Press 
scored  points  against  Brill,  but  they  also 
appeared  puffed  up— defensive. 

After  the  first  issue,  it  was  tricky  stav- 
ing off  a  sense  of  anticlimax.  Because 
expectations  are  so  high,  editors  commit 
disproportionate  attention  to  a  magazine's 
debut  issue,  throwing  everything  into  the 
breach  and  finding  they  have  weak  re- 
serves for  the  next  few  issues.  It  can  take 
a  year  or  more  for  a  magazine  to  find  its 
true  footing  after  the  initial  glare.  Some 
publications,  such  as  George,  continue  to 
skitter  on  foal  legs.  (As  we  shall  see,  George 
has  become  Brill's  Content's  adopted  twin.) 
It's  also  difficult  for  a  media  publication 
to  break  original  stories  since  it's  so  de- 
pendent on  other  media  for  its  material. 
An  enterprise  such  as  Brill's  Content  is 
inherently  "meta,"  since  it  doesn't  review 
movies,  for  example,  it  reviews  the  review- 
ers who  review  movies.  It's  always  one  or 


two  removes  from  the  main  action.  It's 
also  trying  to  be  heard  above  the  steady 
din  of  gossip,  competitive  potshots,  and 
Conde  Nast  Kremlinology  that's  part  of 
the  menu  each  week  in  Tlie  New  York  Ob- 
server, the  New  York  Press,  and  Michael 
Wolff's  media  column  for  New  York  maga- 
zine, and  each  day  in  Tlie  New  York  Times 
and  especially  the  New  York  Post. 

[ven  so,  the  falling-off  of  Brill's  Content 
was  fast  and  steep  enough  to  induce 
whiplash.  So  many  tiny  antlike  words! 
It  was  like  reading  a  legal  document,  each 
article  carefully  plucked  for  loopholes  and 
ambiguous  phrases  and  flattened  to  a  level 
consistency.  Brill's  columns  are  afflicted 
with  self-important  gab.  Recalling  his  hot- 
seat  appearance  on  Meet  the  Press,  Brill 
wrote,  "Russert  has  helped  me  re-believe 
in  this  magazine.  He  is  a  metaphor  for 
what  it's  about.  This  is  not  a  magazine 


Net  for  years,  and  I  rarely  tire  of  pointing 
out  the  marvels  of  the  Digital  Age  to  a 
skeptical  world,  particularly  a  skeptical 
journalistic  world."  (He  may  rarely  tire, 
but  the  rest  of  us  are  bushed.)  Along 
with  its  roster  of  columnists,  Brill's  Con- 
tent contains  lighter  elements  such  as  the 
Spy-like  "Charlie  Rose  Interrupt-O-Meter" 
and  the  pundits'  batting-average  report, 
and  regular  upbeat  departments  such  as 
"Stuff  We  Like"  and  "Honor  Roll,"  which 
offer  head  pats  for  jobs  well  done.  (Good 
dog,  Lassie!) 

Since  "Pressgate,"  the  feature  articles 
haven't  uncapped  any  gushers,  either. 
The  inevitable  profile  of  Matt  Drudge 
bobbed  nowhere  on  a  sea  of  choppy 
paragraphs  and  negligible  anecdotes.  A 
cover  story  on  Times  op-ed  columnist 
Maureen  Dowd  shifted  buttocks  so  hard 
to  maintain  a  fair  balance  that  each  favor- 
able quote  or  comment  canceled  out  the 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


RENA  LANGE 


LILLY  DODSON 


rnment, 

U  ial 

fizzled 

bout  Prince 

'  ieorge 
•  |    uobodj  bil    and  a 
squill  oJ  prol  '  leftist  sociologist 

[odd  Gitlin  replet  with  fortune-cookie 
iixu  sequiturs  ("Juicy  gos.sip  serves  as 
social  cement")  Hie  "Gossip!"  package 
was  an  attempt  to  dispel  Brill's  Content's 
image  as  upper-middlebrow  stuffy,  but 
I  lie  hybrid  nature  of  the  magazine— part 
public-affairs  journal,  part  consumer 
guide;  part  yenta,  part  swinger— makes 
finding  a  hit  formula  difficult.  The  more 
that  Brill's  Content  tries  to  make  itself  pop 
and  accessible,  the  more  it  resembles 


code,  lie  wants  i<>  be  both  a  disturber  of 
the  peace  and  a  slncl  magistrate,  "II  we 
do  it  right,  this  maga/ine  really  should  be 
the  maga/ine  of  the  Information  Age,"  he 
told  a  public  forum.  The  debut  issue  of 
Brill's  (  ontent  presented  a  lour-point  credo 
of  the  magazine's  "value  system,"  the  first 
and  most  important  point  being  "Nonfic- 
tion  Should  Be  True,"  "accurate  in  fact 
and  in  context."  (You  needn't  be  Pontius 
Pilate  to  believe  that  truth  is  more  slippery 
and  subjective  than  Brill  seems  to  think.) 
To  make  sure  his  magazine  doesn't  tres- 
pass against  its  own  commandments,  Brill 
hired  an  ombudsman,  Bill  Kovach,  the  cu- 
rator of  the  Nieman  Foundation  for  Jour- 
nalism at  Harvard  University,  to  field  com- 
plaints and  file  a  regular  report  to  the 
readers.  Brill's  contention  is  that  a  maga- 


Weiss  told  us  he  wrote  to  the  cable  net- 
work recently  that  "CNN  really  should  dis- 
close ...  its  ownership  interest  in  movies  it 
reviews.  For  instance,  you  posted  a  laudato- 
ry review  of  You've  (jot  Mail  [on  CNN.com]. 
The  review  did  not  disclose  that  Warner 
Brothers  is  the  producer  and  distributor  of 
the  film."  (Like  CNN,  Warner  Brothers  is 
part  of  Time  Warner  Inc.) 

Weiss  has  a  good  point,  and  when  we 
asked  CNN  about  it,  the  network  agreed. 
A  spokesman  characterized  the  omission  as 
an  oversight  and  a  disclosure  was  added  to 
the  review  by  the  next  morning. 

n  the  same  spirit  of  meddling,  the  Web 
site  for  Brill's  Content  has  instituted  a 
Complaint  Board,  where  readers  disgrun- 
tled with  other  media  outlets  can  file  their 
letters  and  have  them  published  in  full; 
Brill's  crack  staff  then  will  contact  the  outlet 


Content's  hybrid  nature-part  yenta,  part  swinger-makes  finding  a  hit  formula  difficult. 


Frankenstein's  monster  trying  to  dance.  It 
can't  help  planting  its  foot  too  hard. 

Criticism  from  without  and  turmoil 
from  within  led  several  key  personnel  to 
parachute  from  Brill's  masthead.  The  edi- 
tor, Michael  Kramer,  rumored  to  be  a  big- 
ger hothead  than  Brill,  left  in  December 
under  a  noxious  cloud  to  join  the  Sunday 
Daily  News;  managing  editor  Joan  Fried- 
man and  co-executive  editor  Eric  Garland 
also  pulled  the  cord.  When  publisher  Sal- 
ly Preston  resigned  in  April,  complaining 
to  friends  about  the  lack  of  resources  at 
Brill's  Content  (according  to  the  New  York 
Post),  Brill  responded,  "She  wasn't  selling 
anything  [anyway]." 

Look  at  a  magazine  like  Brill's  Content. 
Steven  Brill's  idea  is  that  the  media  is  to 
operate  under  the  same  standard  as  the 
court  system  in  terms  of  proof  beyond  a 
reasonable  doubt.  The  Founders  would  go 
nuts.  They  understood  that  there  was  a 
difference  between  the  judiciary  and  the 
press.  For  Brill  to  encourage  people  to 
adopt  values  like,  We  don't  go  with  a  story 
unless  we  know  it  beyond  a  reasonable 
doubt— that's  a  Stalinist  concept. 

—MSNBC  anchor  John  Hockenberry, 

interviewed  in  Mother  Jones 

(May-June  1999). 

The  limp  follow-through  of  Brill's  Con- 
tent can't  be  blamed  on  particular  arti- 
cles or  low  morale  down  on  the  rowing 
deck.  It's  rooted  in  the  divided  nature  of 
Brill's  perception  of  his  role— his  split  per- 
sona as  maverick  and  mogul.  Brill  made 
his  name  and  fortune  breaking  the  rules, 
only  to  seek  to  enshrine  his  own  honor 


zine  like  his  should  practice  what  it  preach- 
es and  be  subject  to  the  same  scrutiny  to 
which  it  subjects  others. 

In  principle,  it's  a  laudable  idea,  if  you 
like  laudable  ideas.  In  practice,  it  robs  the 
magazine  of  forward  thrust  and  immerses 
it  in  minutiae.  (It's  also  inconsistent.  When 
Brill's  Content  published  the  salaries  of  me- 
dia movers  and  spear-carriers,  Brill's  own 
income  was  notably  absent.)  Like  David 
Foster  Wallace's  fiction,  Brill's  Content  an- 
notates itself  so  anal-retentively  that  any 
semblance  of  inner  life  suffocates  under  a 
heap  of  hypertext.  One  ombudsman  re- 
port, about  the  proper  identification  of  op- 
ed writers  and  the  advocacy  groups  they 
represent,  was  so  torturous  that  Kovach 
ended  his  recap,  "I  told  you  this  was  going 
to  be  complicated,  didn't  I?"  In  another, 
Kovach  conducted  a  Journalism  101  semi- 
nar for  the  uninitiated,  distinguishing  be- 
tween cynicism  and  healthy  skepticism 
("the  most  important  friend  a  good  jour- 
nalist can  have")  as  a  prelude  to  clearing 
up  the  confusion  in  some  readers'  minds 
"about  what  a  columnist  is  and  how 
columns  differ  from  the  other  bylined  arti- 
cles that  appear  in  the  magazine."  Not  sat- 
isfied to  contemplate  its  own  navel,  Brill's 
Content  has  deputized  itself  as  journalism's 
official  buttinsky.  In  "The  Big  Blur"  col- 
umn written  by  Eric  Effron,  who  succeed- 
ed Michael  Kramer  as  editor  of  the  maga- 
zine, Effron  dipped  into  the  mailbag  and 
fished  out  this  helpful  pain-in-the-neck 
suggestion. 

One  CNN  viewer  (and  Brill's  Content 
reader),  Phil  Weiss  of  Boise,  Idaho,  came  for- 
ward with  this  observation. 


in  question  for  its  response.  Brill's  Content 
needs  to  concentrate  on  its  own  editorial 
problems,  not  micromanage  other  publica- 
tions' or  stations'  domestic  disputes,  which 
are  often  inscrutable  to  those  not  directly 
interested,  and  tedious  to  unravel. 

I  found  myself  dragged  into  a  burning 
non-issue  in  Lome  Manly's  column,  "The 
Cultural  Elite"  (February  1999).  The 
background:  I  published  an  article  in  the 
October  1998  Vanity  Fair  about  fashion- 
model  fiction  which  centered  on  the  latest 
novels  by  Jay  Mclnerney  (Model  Behavior) 
and  Bret  Easton  Ellis  (Glamorama).  It 
was  not  a  book  review,  as  Brill's  Content 
seems  to  think,  but  a  literary-trend  piece. 
Its  thesis,  buried  in  plain  sight  for  all  to 
see,  was  that  these  Brylcreem  boys  were 
chasing  supermodels  across  the  page  at  a 
time  when  the  very  concept  of  "super- 
model" seemed  tired,  passe.  I  also  sug- 
gested that  there  was  something  immature 
and  homoerotic  about  this  glittery  obses- 
sion with  fashion  divas.  My  venial  sins,  ac- 
cording to  Brill's  Content,  were  (a)  I  failed 
to  mention  my  long-standing  feud  with 
Mclnerney,  and  (b)  I  neglected  to  acknowl- 
edge that  a  character  in  Model  Behavior 
named  Kevin  Shipley  was  based  on  me 
and  that  Vanity  Fair  was  also  targeted, 
ergo  my  piece  may  have  been  motivated 
by  payback.  One  charge  is  true  and  irrel- 
evant, the  other  untrue  and  irrelevant. 
True,  I  didn't  trot  out  my  flying-tomahawk 
history  with  Mclnerney  in  the  V.F  col- 
umn. Not  because  I  was  trying  to  slip 
anything  past  the  reader  but  because 
these  skirmishes  are  all  on  the  public  rec- 
ord. It's  not  as  if  Mclnerney  and  I  had 
a  private  spat  which  snaked  into  print 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


P 


DOLCE&GABBANA 


825  MADISON  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


I  III 
Iclner- 
i  stan- 

fastj  Critic 

;.  m/able 

caricature,  i  <  haracterization. 

And  the  conjecture  thai  liimiv  Fair  would 
ordei  a  Moe  Greene  hit  on  Mclnemey 
because  he  toothlessly  parodied  it  in 
Model  Behavior  as  Beau  Monde,  a  "glossy 
magazine  devoted  to  naked  pictures  of 
Demi   Moore,"  is  even  more  juvenile.  I 


the  correspondents  checking  in  this  month 

though  not  with  words  of  praise.  (Praise 

conies  to  ns  primarily  from  those  outside 
the  media  bubble.)"  In  an  item  for  "Stuff 
We  Like."  Brill  himself  indulged  in  revi- 
sionist populism,  touting  Tom  Brokaw's 
Fhe  Greatest  Generation  for  celebrating  the 
everyday  heroes  of  WW.  II,  whom  Brill 
contrasted  with  the  rat-racers  of  today.  "In 
the  case  of  Brokaw's  subjects,  they  weren't 
missing  dinners  and  pulling  all-nighters  to 
get  a  deal  done  or  an  IPO  launched  or  to 
get  into  an  Ivy  League  school."  An  odd 
swipe  given  Brill's  status  as  a  yuppie  over- 
achiever  who   has  done   more  than   his 


participated  in.  Referring  to  J.F.K.  Jr.  as  "a 
whipping  boy  lor  the  cognoscenti,"  a  de- 
scription with  which  Brill  himself  could 
identify,  Pogrebin's  article  emphasized  the 
chasm  between  the  Beltway  snobs  and  the 
"lolks"  who  read  George.  George's  circula- 
tion numbers  were  cited  as  if  they  were 
polls  indicating  a  groundswell  of  support. 
The  special  pleading  of  the  piece  reached 
its  comic  height  when  Brill's  Content  tracked 
down  actual  George  subscribers  to  ask 
them  what  they  thought  of  the  magazine. 
"Retired  librarian  Mary  Dreksler  of  Satel- 
lite Beach,  Florida,  says  George  is  portable 
fare.  'If  you're  watching  TV  or  you're  in  the 


Brill's  Content  bags  small  game  for  minor  infractions  and  lets  bigger  ogres  roam  free. 


mean,  Mclnerney  slurps  wine  each  month 
for  House  &  Garden]  He  needs  a  designat- 
ed driver  before  he  can  take  the  high  road 
regarding  glossy  magazines. 

/  do  not  argue  here,  of  course,  that  only 
demonstrable  facts  are  news.  Tliere  are 
times  and  occasions  when  rumor  is  almost 
as  important  as  the  truth— when  a 
newspaper's  duty  to  its  readers  requires  it 
to  tell  them  not  only  what  has  happened, 
but  also  what  is  reported,  what  is  threat- 
ened, what  is  merely  said. 

— H.  L.  Mencken,  "Journalism  in 

America,"  in  Prejudices:  Sixth  Series 

(1927). 

The  leak  is  a  news  event,  the  leak  being 
true  is  a  news  event,  and  the  leak  not 
being  true  is  a  news  event.  We  have  to 
cover  all  three  of  those. . . .  Then  it's  up  to 
the  reader  or  the  viewer  to  judge.  The  only 
alternative  is  that  we  put  the  story  through 
the  Steve  Brill  Committee  of  Truth  and 
Conformity,  and  I  think  that's  absolutely 
outrageous. 

—John  Hockenberry,  in  Mother  Jones. 

Shunned  by  the  media  elite  since  his  de- 
but issue,  Brill  has  attempted  to  turn 
their  cold  shoulders  to  his  advantage 
by  repositioning  himself  as  a  populist  exec- 
utive, a  Steve  Forbes  with  Glengarry  Glen 
Ross  gonads.  Web-site  banner  ads  and 
New  York  bus  ads  for  Brill's  Content  run 
fuming  quotes  about  the  magazine  from 
Sam  Donaldson  and  Michael  IsikofT  with 
the  payoff  line  the  more  they  scream  . . . 
THE  better  we  seem.  It's  us  little  bullies 
versus  them  big  bullies.  The  precis  to  the 
"Letters"  section  for  the  Brill's  Content 
May  1999  issue  states,  "Staffers  at  The 
New  Yorker,  U.S.  News  &  World  Report, 
the  Forward,  and  USA  Today  are  among 


share  of  deals.  (And  to 
whom  getting  into  an  Ivy 
League  school  was  of  para- 
mount importance.) 

Brill's  brand  of  pin-striped 
populism  blossomed  into  ro- 
mance when  he  embraced  John  F.  Kenne- 
dy Jr.  as  a  soul  brother  in  the  Brill's  Content 
of  March  1999.  Brill  could  relate  to  how  the 
other  had  bled.  Like  Brill,  J.F.K.  Jr.  is  a 
public  figure  whose  magazine,  George,  ar- 
rived with  much  fanfare  and  then  found  it- 
self an  object  of  derision  and  circling  buz- 
zards. Both  men  have  invested  so  much 
macho  identity  into  their  magazines  that 
failure  would  entail  a  larger  loss  of  face. 
Featuring  J.F.K.  Jr.  on  the  cover,  Brill's 
Content  conducted  a  salvage  operation  of 
George's  reputation  and  delivered  a  rebuke 
to  the  naysayers.  Accompanying  an  article 
on  George  by  Abigail  Pogrebin  was  a  white- 
noise  Q  and  A  with  J.FK.  Jr.  (trying  to  get 
good  quotes  from  him  is  like  checking  a 
burro  for  gold  teeth)  which  Brill  himself 


car,  you  can  pick  it  up  and  put  it  down.'" 
The  same  could  be  said  of  a  bottle  of  Yoo- 
Hoo.  "Elaine  Benken,  a  34-year-old  graph- 
ic designer  in  Indianapolis,  says,  'It's  intelli- 
gent, but  not  so  intelligent  that  it's  hard  to 
get  through.'"  George— the  magazine  that 
doesn't  tax  the  old  bean.  And  yet  from 
such  endorsements  Brill's  Content  drew  sus- 
tenance. The  subtextual  message  of  the 
J.F.K.  Jr.  package  was:  Like  George,  Brill's 
Content  is  a  magazine  that's  been  dis- 
missed by  the  pundits  but  resonates  with 
coupon  clippers.  Pogrebin:  "It  looks  like 
George  has  connected  on  its  own  terms, 
winning  the  following  it  was  after:  the  edu- 
cated American  consumer— not  Joe  Six 
Pack,  but  Josie  White-Wine 
Spritzer  ..."  Josie  whol 

It  was  a  theme  amplified 
by  Brill  when  he  served  as 
the  keynote  speaker  at  a  1999 
forum  sponsored  by  Talkers 
Magazine,  a  publication  de- 
voted to  talk-radio  rabble.  In- 
troducing Brill  was  Michael 
Harrison,  the  editor  and  pub- 
lisher of  Talkers,  who  described  Brill  as  be- 
ing "very  much  in  sync  with  the  type  of  at- 
titudes and  mentality  that  we  in  talk  media 
have,"  a  comment  which  Brill  amen'd:  "We 

have  a  lot  in  common When  it  comes 

to  arrogance  and  power  and  lack  of  ac- 
countability ...  the  media  are  actually  the 
only  people  in  the  world  who  make  lawyers 
look  good."  Like  talk  radio.  Brill's  Content 
bypasses  the  arteriosclerotic  channels  of  tra- 
ditional top-down  communication  to  take 
its  message  directly  to  the  average  Ameri- 
can. It  has  a  rate  base  of  225,000,  he  told 
them,  and  "most  of  those  225,000  people 
are  civilians,"  not  media  insiders.  "The  me- 
dia doesn't  like  this  magazine  very  much, 
because  it  challenges  them,"  Brill  explained. 
If  he  thought  he  was  forging  a  fellowship 


VANITY     FA  I 


AUGUST     1999 


M 


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iNPRIN'v  MANDARIN  FLAVORED  VODKA.  PRO 
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\>  ith  tht  ■  i  .ik  radio  :  rsonalities,  the 
iHind  answea  pi  riod  musl  h  rve  come 
exploding  cigaj  rhe  firsl  qu 
lated  from  1  ( stei  Kinsoh  inj  i  blus- 
tering Foghorn  I  eghoro  l':i!.  olii  i  con- 
servative who  passes  foi  "a  character"  in 
personality-bleached  Washington,  asking 
.in  mane,  irrel  '.mi,  and  tendentious  ques- 
tion about  thi  late  Walto  Duranty  oi  The 
\<n  )ork  limes.  Kinsorving  wanted  to 
know  whj  win  friends"  at  the  Times  con- 
tinue to  brag  about  Duranty's  winning  a 
Pulitzer  Prize  foi  his  coverage  of  the  Soviet 
I  Ihion  ( Duranty  having  gone  down  in  con- 
servative annals  as  a  Communist  stooge). 
Has  that  evei  crossed  your  inquisitive 
mind?,  Kinsolving  demanded.  It  has  now, 
Brill  said.  "1  want  ideas,  even  if  they  come 
in  the  form  of  a  public  beratement."  Anoth- 
er questioner  took  great  umbrage— this  was 
a  crowd  that  specialized  in  umbrage— at 
Brill's  anti-Ken  Starr  report,  wanting  to 
know  how  it  made  Brill  feel  that  "Bill  and 
Hillary"  drew  such  delight  from  it.  "Un- 
comfortable," Brill  said.  "Obviously  un- 
comfortable." 

He  looked  uncomfortable,  all  right- 
uncomfortable  at  having  questions 
lobbed  at  him  by  this  elephants'  grave- 
yard division  of  Angry  White  Males.  (If 
this  is  populism,  bring  back  the  landed 
gentry.)  Regardless  of  the  overture  he  had 
made,  these  squawk  boxes  recognized  that 
politically  Brill  wasn't  one  of  them.  They 
spurned  his  advances.  But  to  be  accepted 


Alexandei  Cockburn  ia  again  crowing  like 
a  roostei  in  in-,  spot  at  the  New  York  Press. 
The  right,  obsessed  with  the  bugaboo  of 
liberal  bias,  lias  shown  less  range,  though 
William  F.  Buckley  Jr.  practiced  critical 
kung  fu  in  Rumbles  Left  unci  Right  (where 
he  put  Jack  Paar's  broadcasts  and  Murray 
Kempton's  columns  under  a  monocled 
gaze),  and  Hilton  Kramer's  bird-dogging  of 
The  New  York  Times  in  the  New  York  Post 
was  a  consistently  entertaining  if  cackling 
column  until  it  was  canned  by  that  junior 
auxiliary  gasbag  John  Podhoretz,  the  Post's 
editorial  editor.  (Full  disclosure:  Hilton 
Kramer  is  the  editor  of  The  New  Criterion, 
to  which  my  wife,  Laura  Jacobs,  and  I  con- 
tribute. So  there.)  Somewhere  beyond  the 
conventional  political  spectrum,  anarchist 
spirits  such  as  H.  L.  Mencken  and  Dwight 
Macdonald  poked  holes  in  many  a  dirigi- 
ble. (In  an  essay  in  his  collection  Discrimi- 
nations, Macdonald  belittles  the  mystique 
of  newspaper  writing,  a  craft  he  insists  any 
donkey  can  master.) 

Lacking  a  political  point  of  view,  Brill's 
Content  bags  small  game  for  minor  in- 
fractions and  lets  bigger  ogres  roam  free. 
When  it  writes  about  Thomas  L.  Friedman, 
the  Times's  op-ed  page  columnist  on  for- 
eign affairs,  it  concerns  itself  not  with  his 
armchair-bully  bombs-away  approach  to 
foreign  policy  (pound  the  Serbs  into  the 
previous  century),  but  with  a  couple  of 
columns  he  wrote  about  Internet  com- 
merce. When  it  covers  Tl\e  Capital  Gang's 
Robert  Novak,  it  focuses  on  the  cash  cow 


zine  is  still  breathing,  and  Brill  remains  a 
fighter.  The  drive  to  prove  those  laughing 
preppies  at  Deerfield  wrong  seems  to  ani- 
mate everything  he  does.  And  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  there  are  prickly  things 
in  Brill's  Content  not  found  elsewhere.  Hav- 
ing Paul  Brodeur,  a  former  science  writer 
for  The  New  Yorker,  challenge  the  worth  of 
recent  New  Yorker  articles  downplaying  the 
carcinogenicity  of  trichloroethylene  (the 
danger  of  which  formed  the  basis  for  the 
movie  A  Civil  Action)  and  the  "myth"  of 
cancer  clusters  was  eye-opening.  Brodeur's 
credentials  and  long  association  with  The 
New  Yorker  gave  his  objections  disturbing 
weight.  Malcolm  Gladwell,  one  of  the 
writers  he  was  criticizing,  seems  like  a 
dandy  by  comparison. 

I  also  got  a  kick  out  of  Josh  Greenfeld's 
quixotic  attempt  to  get  a  reprint  fee  out  of 
The  New  York  Times  for  his  1969  review  of 
Portnoy's  Complaint,  which  the  Times  pub- 
lished in  its  anthology  Books  of  the  Centu- 
ry. This  first-person  piece,  published  in 
the  June  1999  issue  of  Brill's  Content,  is  a 
cantankerous  comedy,  with  a  former  Times 
Book  Review  editor  offering  to  pay  $50 
out  of  his  own  pocket  (which  Greenfeld 
rightly  judges  an  insult)  and  a  cameo  ap- 
pearance by  Philip  Roth  himself,  the 
prince  of  ambivalence  first  siding  with 
Greenfeld  ("He  doesn't  give  a  hoot  if  the 
Times  book  includes  the  Portnoy's  review 
or  not"),  then  reversing  course  ("Why 
should  every  other  shtunk  be  in  it  besides 
me?").   The   whole  peashooting  battle 


Brill's  Contents  been  dismissed  by  the  pundits  but  resonates  with  coupon  clippers. 


by  the  right,  or  the  left,  Brill  would  have 
to  violate  his  mission  statement. 

In  the  four-point  credo  of  Brill's  Content, 
Brill  affirms  that  the  magazine  will  not  ad- 
dress issues  "in  ideological  terms."  It  will 
not  choose  political  sides,  because  that 
would  impede  a  disinterested  pursuit  of  the 
Truth.  But  an  unideological  crusader— an 
apolitical  populist— seems  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  True  populists  tend  to  veer  either 
left  (Studs  Terkel,  Jesse  Jackson)  or  right 
(Rush  Limbaugh,  Pat  Buchanan).  The  live- 
liest press  criticism  has  always  come  from 
various  poles  of  opposition.  On  the  left, 
I.  F.  Stone's  Weekly  became  the  bulletin 
board  of  anti- Vietnam  War  activists,  a  salty 
decoding  of  Pentagon  briefings  and  body 
counts;  Noam  Chomsky,  an  ascetic  maver- 
ick, taught  an  entire  generation  how  to 
onion-peel  the  mainstream  media  in  Manu- 
facturing Consent  (with  Edward  S.  Her- 
man), a  book  which  has  been  spun  off  into 
a  documentary  film  and  a  study  guide; 


he's  created  through  his  newsletter,  speak- 
ing engagements,  and  expensive  seminars, 
ignoring  his  long,  ugly  history  of  Red- 
baiting. Like  George,  Brill's  Content  covers 
its  beat  as  if  it  had  no  stake  in  the  out- 
come. But  in  a  battle  of  ideas,  a  partisan 
struggle,  who  roots  for  the  referee?  De- 
spite its  title,  Brill's  Content  isn't  really  con- 
cerned with  content,  but  with  process,  cor- 
porate branding,  and  inside  baseball. 

Can  Brill's  Content  survive?  It  has  re- 
ceived an  infusion  of  funds  from  in- 
vestor George  Soros,  another  skybox 
populist,  a  vote  of  confidence  which  has 
been  tagged  at  $10  million.  But  its  sub- 
scriber base  is  flat,  and  gambits  such  as  of- 
fering cut-rate  subscriptions  to  journalism, 
political-science,  and  communications  stu- 
dents (dangling  free  subs  to  their  teachers) 
betray  a  sweaty  upper  Up  of  desperation. 
Like  many  other  magazines,  it's  also  suf- 
fering from  newsstand  blahs.  Yet  the  maga- 


reads  like  an  update  of  Charles  Simmons's 
witty  roman  a  clef  about  the  Times  Book 
Review,  The  Belles  Lettres  Papers. 

The  contributions  by  Brodeur  and 
Greenfeld  reminded  me  of  the  defunct 
[More],  the  much-lamented  journalism 
magazine  in  the  70s  briefly  edited  by  Mi- 
chael Kramer  (how  ironic!),  where  writers 
could  duke  it  out  as  equals  without  feeling 
as  if  they  were  answering  to  a  higher  au- 
thority. (fMoreJ's  annual  convention  was 
named  in  honor  of  A.  J.  Liebling,  the 
magazine's  Jovian  inspiration.)  A  rueful 
first-person  account  by  Phil  Bronstein— the 
editor  of  the  San  Francisco  Examiner  and 
the  man  man  enough  to  be  married  to 
Sharon  Stone— about  life  in  the  media  fish- 
bowl  had  some  zip  when  it  was  published 
in  April.  In  articles  such  as  these,  Brill's 
Content  slips  out  from  under  Steven  Brill's 
iron  thumb  and  shows  quivers  of  life. 
Though  what  Josie  White-Wine  Spritzer 
would  make  of  it  all,  I  have  no  idea.  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST      1999 


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HMihKiUing 


CAUSE  CELEBRE 

Top  left:  Philadelphia  police  gather 
around  the  car  that  Officer  Daniel  Faulkner 
stopped  before  he  was  shot  to  death  on 
December  9, 1981.  Top  right:  Faulkner's 
convicted  murderer,  Mumia  Abu-Jamal, 
on  death  row  in  1994.  Inset:  the  murder 
was  front-page  news  in  Philadelphia. 


J£m**i*Ai 


THE  FAMOUS  AND  THE  DEAD 

Mumia  Abu-Jamal  has  become  America  s  most 

famous  prisoner,  with  celebrities  including 

Norman  Mailer  and  Spike  Lee  calling  for  a  new  trial. 

But  Maureen  Faulkner  wants  the  world  to 

remember  why  Abu-Jamal  is  on  death  row:  the  police 

officer  he  was  convicted  of  murdering  18  years 

ago  was  her  husband,  Danny 

BY  BUZZ  BISSINGER 


Haniel  Faulkner  was  a  police  of- 
ficer with  a  square  face  and 
arching  eyebrows,  an  everyday 
cop  riding  a  patrol  car  in  the 
quirky  and  restless  hours  be- 
fore dawn.  Already  that  night 
Faulkner  had  accompanied  a 
seven-year-old  alleged  rape  vic- 
tim to  the  hospital.  But  this  was  the  grave- 
yard shift  in  the  red-light  belly  of  the  city, 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


where  the  ghosts  of  the  night  always  came 
out  most  vividly— muggers  yanking  gold 
chains  from  necks,  runners  on  10-speed 
bikes  hired  by  pimps  to  make  sure  the 
prostitutes  were  being  productive,  the  flow 
of  beer  in  sodden  after-hours  bars. 

At  25,  he  had  been  a  cop  in  Philadel- 
phia for  five  years,  and  he  had  aspirations 
that  didn't  reach  too  far— maybe  a  long  ca- 
reer as  a  police  officer,  maybe  a  career  as  a 


prosecutor  in  the  district  attorney's  office, 
maybe  a  little  getaway  house  in  the  Poco- 
nos  if  he  and  his  wife,  Maureen,  could 
scrape  together  another  $10,000. 

There  had  been  talk  of  kids  between 
the  two  of  them— how  many,  what  sex  was 
preferred.  But  the  marriage  was  young 
then,  barely  a  year  old.  He  had  adapted  to 
the  fact  that  she  was  a  cook  without  poten- 
tial. She  had  adapted  to  his  life  as  a  po- 

AUGUST     1999 


the 

1  th when 

■    Dailey, 

rhe  Faulk- 

n  iik  hospital,  and 

had  expressed, 

foi  the  in  il    me  the  feai  she  felt  foi  ha 

husband's  safety.  "1  love  police  woik,"  he 

had  said  in  response.  "And  if  anything 

happens  u>  me   life  goes  on."  It  was  the 

kind  of  statement  that  cops  like  to  make— 

slightl)  fatalistic,  slight!)  macho    and  she 

didn't  lake  it  as  an  ominous  harbinger. 

He  had  cooked  dinner  that  night.  Then 
he  had  sat  at  the  table,  paid  bills,  and  put 
aside  some  money  for  Christmas  shop- 
ping. Running  late,  he  had  decided  to 
dress  at  home— white  T-shirt,  blue  police 
shirt,  blue  uniform  sweater  to  ward 
off  the  chill  of  early  December.  He 
left  the  two-bedroom  row  house  in 
the  southwest  section  of  Philadel- 
phia at  11:30  P.M. 

His  shift  had  nearly  reached  its 
midpoint  when  he  pulled  his 
patrol  car,  612,  behind  a  light-blue 
Volkswagen  Beetle  near  the  dimly  lit  cor- 
ner ot  13th  and  Locust  Streets.  Faulkner 
had  apparently  stopped  the  Beetle  for 
some  sort  of  traffic  violation.  But  at  3:51 
A.M.  something  caused  Faulkner  to  radio 
for  a  wagon— a  clear  indication  that  he 
had  decided  to  make  an  arrest. 

612:  I  have  a  car  stopped  ...  12,  13th  and 
Locust. 

Radio:  Car  to  back  612,  13th  and  Locust. 

612:  On  second  thought  send  me  a  wag- 
on 1234  Locust. 

A  police  car  then  swung  out  in  the  di- 
rection of  Faulkner.  But  as  it  was  doing 
so,  a  passerby  frantically  stopped  the  ve- 
hicle, and  an  officer  immediately  put  out 
a  broadcast  over  the  radio. 

"We  just  got  information  from  a  pas- 
serby, there's  a  policeman  shot." 

Nine  seconds  later,  when  police  arrived 
at  the  scene,  they  found  that  Officer  Faulk- 
ner was  not  in  the  act  of  making  an  arrest. 
Instead,  he  was  sprawled  on  the  sidewalk 
with  two  bullet  wounds.  According  to  eye- 
witness accounts  and  testimony  by  ballis- 
tics experts  and  the  pathologist  who  exam- 
ined his  body,  the  first  bullet  had  been 
fired  from  approximately  19  inches  away.  It 
tore  into  the  left  side  of  Faulkner's  upper 
back,  one  inch  to  the  left  of  the  midline,  al- 
most at  the  base  of  his  neck.  According  to 
the  prosecution's  reconstruction  of  the  in- 
cident, Faulkner  returned  fire  and  actually 
hit  the  man  who  had  just  shot  him. 


While  Faulknei  was  down  on  his  back, 

the  shootei  walked  ova  t<>  him,  stood  at 

point-blank  range,  and  continued  to  fue. 
One  ol  the  bullets  hit  Faulkner  in  the  laee. 
It  erupted  in  a  Hash  that  a  witness  could 
clearly  see,  and  Faulkner's  entire  body 
jerked  from  the  impact. 

The  bullet,  fired  from  a  distance  of  ap- 
proximately 12  inches,  entered  his  face  live 
inches  below  the  top  of  his  head,  exploded 
through  his  nose,  tore  through  the  bones 
of  his  face,  through  the  bones  above  his 
eyes,  through  his  entire  brain,  through 
the  right  parietal  bone  in  the  back  of  his 
head,  and  lodged  in  the  right  occipital 
bone.  If  there  was  anything  merciful  about 
the  way  Faulkner  died  on  the  night  of 
December  9,  1981,  it  was  this,  taken  from 
the  testimony  of  the  medical  examiner 


'1  love  police  work/'  Officer 
Faulkner  said.  "And  if  anything 
happens  to  me,  life  goes  on/7 


who  performed  the  autopsy:  "Complete 
instantaneous  disability  and  death." 

The  deprivations  of  death  row  in  Pennsyl- 
vania are  wrenching  by  any  standard— 
23  hours  of  every  24  spent  alone  in  a 
locked  cell,  family  and  loved  ones  viewed 
only  through  Plexiglas,  strict  rules  on  the 
number  of  personal  items  that  can  be  main- 
tained. It  has  been  the  fate  of  a  former  radio 
broadcast  journalist  named  Mumia  Abu- 
Jamal  to  have  been  on  death  row  since  1983 
first  in  a  Gothic-looking  prison  known  as 
SCI  Huntingdon  and  now  in  a  modern  fa- 
cility, SCI  Greene,  in  the  southwest  pocket 
of  the  state,  hard  by  the  West  Virginia  line, 
which  from  afar  looks  like  a  shopping  mall. 

For  part  of  this  time,  there  may  have 
been  some  negligible  comfort  in  the  fact 
that  Pennsylvania  had  not  actually  carried 
out  an  execution  since  1962.  But  in  May 
1995  the  state  did  execute  an  inmate,  and 
a  second  execution  followed  that  August. 

In  1995  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania, 
Tom  Ridge,  signed  a  death  warrant  for 
Abu-Jamal,  who  on  July  2,  1982,  had  been 
found  guilty  by  a  jury  in  Philadelphia  of 
the  first-degree  murder  of  Officer  Faulkner. 
The  jury,  composed  of  10  whites  and  two 
blacks,  deliberated  for  less  than  six  hours 
before  reaching  a  verdict  in  the  two-week 
trial.  A  day  later  the  jury  began  delibera- 
tions on  the  penalty  phase  of  the  trial  at 


2:27  r.M.  and  reconvened  an  hour  and  53 
minutes  later,  returning  a  sentence  of  death. 

The  warrant  was  stayed  by  a  state-court 
judge,  putting  off  for  the  immediate  future 
any  possible  execution  of  Abu-Jamal.  Vari- 
ous lawyers  have  been  working  on  his  case 
for  years,  and  a  legal  team  that  has  now 
grown  to  five  attorneys  and  13  investigators 
labors  feverishly  to  get  from  the  federal 
court  what,  despite  exhaustive  appeals,  the 
state  courts  of  Pennsylvania  have  refused 
to  grant:  a  new  trial  for  Abu-Jamal  on  the 
basis  that  he  is  innocent,  and  that  he  was 
convicted  in  a  kangaroo-court-style  pro- 
ceeding that  was  grotesquely  unfair. 

"Don't  tell  me  about  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death,"  Abu-Jamal  has  written 
in  one  of  the  two  books  he  has  had  pub- 
lished while  on  death  row.  "I  five  there." 
Those  who  have  visited  him  in  prison  say 
his  spirit  and  strength  are  remarkable.  But, 

however  harsh,  the  rigors  of  his  impris- 
onment are  also  unique. 

Around  the  world  his  case  has 

become  a  cause  celebre,  making 

\   him  the  most  famous  prisoner 

I   not  simply  in  America  but 

perhaps  in  the  entire  world.  And 

it  is  clear  that  even  on  death  row  the 

demands  of  celebrity  are  never  easy. 

Too  many  people  who  want  to  visit.  Too 
much  mail  that  needs  to  be  answered. 

Take,  for  example,  the  foreign-dignitary 
dilemma. 

Last  April,  Danielle  Mitterrand,  the 
widow  of  former  French  president  Fran- 
cois Mitterrand,  wanted  to  see  the  45-year- 
old  Abu-Jamal  in  order  to  express  her  sup- 
port and  solidarity.  So  did  Dr.  Winfried 
Wolf,  a  member  of  the  German  Parlia- 
ment. To  accommodate  them,  Abu-Jamal 
had  to  juggle  his  visitors'  list.  Given  that 
prison  officials  have  a  specific  limit  on  the 
number  of  visitors— and  generally  allow 
an  inmate  to  change  that  list  once  a  month 
—it  became  quite  a  logistical  nightmare, 
according  to  Abu-Jamal's  lead  attorney, 
Leonard  Weinglass. 

With  an  open  slot  in  the  visitors'  list, 
Mme.  Mitterrand  was  able  to  get  in.  But 
Winfried  Wolf  was  not  so  lucky,  a  fact  that 
Weinglass  found  particularly  awkward  due 
to  the  importance  of  what  he  characterizes 
as  Abu-Jamal's  "German  support." 

If  it  isn't  the  foreign-dignitary  dilemma, 
it's  the  mail  dilemma.  Some  inmates  on 
death  row  get  no  mail,  but  Abu-Jamal 
gets  batches  of  it,  according  to  Weinglass, 
and  there's  just  not  enough  time  to  answer 
all  of  it.  It  may  be  because  of  the  master's 
degree  Abu-Jamal  is  studying  for  through 
the  auspices  of  California  State  University. 
It  may  be  because  of  the  regular  column 
he  writes  about  world  and  domestic  af- 
fairs (distributed  over  one  of  a  host  of  Web 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


LY/BACK  TO  SCHOOL  ISSUE 


ROMBIE  &  FITCH  ST 


LL  1  800  432  0888 


idigious 

m  in  ol  i luniks 
ichers  union  in 
,  I  i,  ;m.   walkouts 
behal  m  <'n  how  to  allo- 

0,0  0  thai  Weinglass  says  was 
rai  ed  from  a  benefit  concert;  the  guards 
who  seek  Ins  advice  on  where  to  send 
their  children  to  college;  the  taped 
commencement  message  he  recent- 
K  seat  to  the  Evergreen  State  Col- 
lege m  Olympia.  Washington. 

"lie  doesn't  have  tune,"  Weinglass 
says  of  the  mail.  "When  I  go  in  to  see 
him.  he  asks  me  to  contact  this  one, 
contact  that  one,  apologize,  tell  them 
I'm  busy." 

But  Weinglass  is  hardly  complaining, 
since  his  days  in  the  cauldron  of  high-profile 
cases  go  all  the  way  back  to  1969,  when  he 
and  William  Kunstler  represented  the  defen- 
dants in  the  Chicago  Seven  trial.  "The  worst 
thing  that  can  happen  to  anyone  in  the 
criminal-justice  system  is  to  be  a  number,  to 
be  faceless  and  a  number,"  says  the  lawyer, 
whose  resume  also  includes  the  Pentagon 
Papers  criminal  case;  the  Angela  Davis 
murder  trial;  the  defense  of  the  kidnappers 
in  the  Patty  Hearst  trial;  and  a  trip  to  Peru 
on  behalf  of  Abimael  Guzman,  the  leader 
of  the  Shining  Path  guerrilla  group,  whose 
war  with  the  government  led  to  the  deaths 
of  nearly  30,000  people.  "The  best  thing 
that  can  happen  to  anyone  in  the  criminal- 
justice  system  is  to  have  outside  support." 

While  efforts  to  gain  a  new  trial  have 
been  rejected  by  the  Pennsylvania  Supreme 
Court  on  two  separate  occasions,  the  sup- 
port for  Abu-Jamal  shows  no  signs  of  stop- 
ping. Last  April,  rallies  held  the  same  day 
in  San  Francisco  and  Philadelphia  at- 
tracted a  combined  25,000  people.  Several 
months  earlier,  a  controversial  benefit  con- 
cert on  behalf  of  Abu-Jamal,  featuring  Rage 
Against  the  Machine  and  the  Beastie  Boys, 
played  to  a  sold-out  crowd  of  16,000  at  the 
Continental  Airlines  Arena  in  New  Jersey. 

When  Weinglass  first  became  involved, 
in  1992,  support  for  the  death-row  in- 
mate was  still  relatively  small.  But  then 
the  mainstream  media  discovered  him, 
irresistibly  drawn  to  the  novelty  of  a 
prison  inmate— a  death-row  prison  inmate 
no  less— with  radio  and  writing  skills  too 
good  to  pass  up. 

In  1994,  National  Public  Radio  signed 
Abu-Jamal  up  to  do  commentaries  on 
prison  life  and  issues  of  crime  on  the  pop- 
ular afternoon  show  All  Things  Considered. 
NPR  backed  off  after  a  vigorous  protest. 
But  the  swirl  of  publicity  over  NPR's  flip- 
flop  only  made  him  hotter.  In  1995  the 
Addison-Wesley  publishing  house,  respond- 


>rk  "Don't  tell  me  about 
A  the  valley  of  the  shado; 
1  of  death,"  Abu-Jamal 
wrote.  "I  live  there." 


u-Jamal  several  days 
er  he  was  shot  by  Daniel  Faulkner. 
Right:  Faulkner's  widow,  Maureen,  flanked    * 
by  police  officers  at  a  commemorative 
service  for  her  husband  in  1981.    — 


ing  to  a  proposal  from  a  literary  agent, 
published  a  book  of  writings  by  Abu-    k 
Jamal  called  Live  from  Death  Row. 

Support  from  Hollywood  also  picked  up 
in  a  major  way  in  1995  after  Governor 
Ridge  signed  the  warrant  of  execution. 
Leading  members  of  the  literary  communi- 
ty rallied  around  Abu-Jamal  as  well.  In  the 
summer  of  1995,  a  full-page  advertisement 
contending  the  convicted  killer  had  received 
an  unfair  trial  appeared  in  Tiie  New  York 
Times.  It  was  signed  by  a  glittering  array  of 
individuals  from  the  Hollywood,  writing, 
and  academic  communities,  including  Maya 
Angelou,  Alec  Baldwin,  Derrick  Bell,  Noam 
Chomsky,  E.  L.  Doctorow,  Roger  Ebert, 
Giinter  Grass,  Spike  Lee,  Norman  Mailer, 
Paul  Newman,  Joyce  Carol  Oates,  Tim 
Robbins,  Salman  Rushdie,  Susan  Sarandon, 
Oliver  Stone,  and  William  Styron. 

Support  for  Abu-Jamal  continued  to 
build  on  an  international  basis,  much  of  it 
fueled  by  overwhelming  opposition  to  the 
death  penalty.  France,  Greece,  Italy,  the 
Netherlands,  and  Spain  are  among  a  raft 
of  countries  that  have  abolished  the  death 
penalty  during  the  past  20  years,  in  con- 
trast to  the  United  States,  where  executions 
are  carried  out  with  numbing  regularity. 

As  a  radio  journalist  in  Philadelphia, 
Abu-Jamal  had  enjoyed  a  certain  degree  of 
success,  friends  and  former  colleagues  say, 
before  unraveling  both  professionally  and 
personally  to  the  point  where  his  occupa- 
tion at  the  time  of  the  shooting  was  that  of 
cabdriver.  But  from  the  canyons  of  death 
row  his  career  resurged  and  skyrocketed, 
and  now  Abu-Jamal  takes  offense  at  those 
who  describe  him  as  a  "former"  journalist. 

"Calling  me  a  former  journalist  is  like 
calling  me  a  former  human  being,"  he 
said  in  an  interview  in  1995.  "I've  pub- 
lished more  than  90  percent  of  the  Black 
and  white  journalists  in  America." 


His  cause  and  his  case  go  beyond  writ- 
ing contracts.  There  is  the  honorary  law 
degree  he  received  from  the  New  College 
of  California  School  of  Law  in  San  Fran- 
cisco. There  are  the  honorary  citizenships 
bestowed  upon  him  by  a  district  of  Copen- 
hagen in  Denmark  and  the  city  of  Paler- 
mo in  Italy.  There  is  the  call  for  clemency 
by  South  African  archbishop  Desmond 
Tutu,  71  members  of  the  Danish  Parlia- 
ment, Elie  Wiesel,  Jesse  Jackson,  and  Mar- 
tin Sheen.  There  is  the  sabotage  of  an  edi- 
tion of  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle,  in  which 
Abu-Jamal  supporters  took  thousands  of 
copies  of  the  paper  from  news  racks  and 
wrapped  a  virtually  identical-looking  four- 
page  section  around  each  one  demanding 
a  new  trial  for  the  convicted  killer. 

A  growth  industry  has  sprouted  on  his 
behalf,  a  mass  of  merchandising  at  rallies 
and  college  lectures  that  any  movie  studio 
would  envy— books,  CDs,  videos,  T-shirts, 
tote  bags,  jackets,  whistles,  candles,  but- 
tons, mouse  pads  ("You  can  have  Mumia 
or  your  choice  of  political  prisoner,"  a 
woman  selling  the  mouse  pads  helpfully 
offered  at  a  recent  rally). 

Some  support  Abu-Jamal  because  they 
believe,  regardless  of  his  guilt  or  inno- 
cence, that  he  received  a  trial  riddled 
with  problems  before  a  judge  notorious  for 
his  pro-prosecution  leanings.  Some  support 
him  because  of  their  opposition  to  the 
death  penalty.  Some  believe  he  is  the  vic- 
tim of  a  frame-up  by  a  Philadelphia  Police 
Department  that  had  a  national  reputation 
for  brutality  and  racism  in  the  1970s. 

They  have  found  in  Abu-Jamal  the  per- 
fect spokesman  and  symbol,  and  the  ingre- 
dients of  star  quality  which  are  an  absolute 
requisite  for  any  cause  in  the  culture  of 


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in  .'i  the 
in,  i  e  can  sell 
•ice  as 
ii  write 
■  the  in. Hf  remark 
nearly  20 
[ifi       i,i.  .in  eration,  .1  man  of 
s  ap]  11  ■  .  a  interesting  chem- 

h  mging  dreadlocks 
.1  nun)  who  aces  Ins  writings  with  just  the 
right  dash  ol  revolutionary  spice  so  as  to 
be  provocative,  In  the  past  I?  months,  more 
than  $200,000  in  donations  poured  in  to 
just  one  of  liis  main  support  groups. 

II  his  been  I  ansformed  into  a  mythic 
figure,  cano'uzed  at  almost  every  opportu- 
nitj  an  mtspoken  revolutionary  and  hero 
to  millions,  in  the  words  of  one  of  the 
band  members  of  Rage  Against  the  Ma- 
chine; a  man  similar  in  spirit  to  Mandela, 
in  the  words  of  novelist  Alice  Walker. 

Abu-Jamal  himself,  in  a  rare  interview 
with  a  member  of  the  mainstream  media 
in  1995  (attempts,  both  in  writing  and 
through  his  lawyer,  made  by  Vanity  Fair  to 
interview  Abu-Jamal  were  unsuccessful), 
said  he  was  uncomfortable  with  his  role 
as  a  symbol.  But  those  who  once 
worked  with  him  wonder.  "The 
guy's  a  worldwide  celebrity," 
says  a  former  colleague.  "I 
don't  know  if  late  at  night 
he  says,  'What  the  fuck 
have  I  gotten  into?  Look 
at  what  I've  accomplished.'" 

Whatever  the  motivation,  the 
beat  of  Abu-Jamal  goes  on.  And 
there  may  be  only  one  thing  to 
mar  it  all:  compelling  evidence  that 
Abu-Jamal  ran  across  Locust  Street 
with  a  gun  in  his  hand  on  that  December 
night  in  1981  and  killed  Daniel  Faulkner. 

In  addition  to  the  evidence,  a  former 
volunteer  for  a  prison-reform  organization 
who  regularly  visited  Abu-Jamal  has  come 
forward  with  what  he  says  was  an  admis- 
sion by  the  inmate  to  the  killing.  In  the 
early  1990s,  Philip  Bloch  was  an  active 
participant  in  the  Pennsylvania  Prison  So- 
ciety. He  was  also  a  student  at  Juniata 
College  in  Huntingdon,  Pennsylvania,  the 
town  where  Abu-Jamal  was  incarcerated. 
Bloch  says  that  he  had  at  least  10  conver- 
sations with  Abu-Jamal  in  prison,  and  that 
it  was  during  one  of  them  when  he  asked 
the  inmate,  "Do  you  have  any  regrets 
about  killing  the  officer?" 

"Yes"  was  Abu-Jamal's  reply,  according 
to  Bloch. 


hen  police  arrived  at  the  scene,  they  not 
only  saw  Faulkner  with  blood  pour- 
ing out  of  his  face,  but  also  saw  Abu- 
Jamal  sitting  in  close  proximity,  on  the  curb. 
Raised  in  a  housing  project  in  Philadel- 
phia, Abu-Jamal  developed  his  political- 


activist  beliefs  in  earnest  in  1969,  when,  at 
I  hi  CO  founded  the  local  chapter  of  the 
Black  Panther  Party  and  became  its  "min- 
1  in  nl  information  Known  in  high  school 
as  a  Strong  student,  he  was  also  expelled 
lor  his  radicalism.  Those  who  knew  Abu- 
Jamal  say  that  lie  never  lost  his  ideological 
beliefs  about  the  system  and  the  intense  de- 
gree of  oppression  against  minorities.  But 
Abu-Jamal  also  became  part  of  the  jour- 
nalistic mainstream,  working  at  a  variety  of 
commercial  radio  stations  in  Philadelphia. 
At  a  certain  point  in  his  life,  he  was  highly 
regarded,  with  a  voice  that  seemed  born 
for  the  airwaves— rich,  velvety,  beautiful. 
Some  saw  in  him  the  kind  of  talent,  partic- 
ularly in  his  ability  to  evoke  mood  and  at- 
mosphere, that  could  have  led  him  as  far 
as  he  wanted  to  go  in  the  radio  business. 
Others  admired  him  for  the  way  he  had 
managed  to  bridge  the  gap  between  tradi- 
tional journalism  and  social  activism  by 
doing  stories  on  the  disadvantaged. 

But  in  the  months  before  the  shooting, 
according  to  colleagues,  it  was  a  talent 


"The  guy's  a  celebrity,"  says  one 
of  Abu-Jamal's  former  colleagues. 
'1  don't  know  if  late  at  night  he  says, 
look  at  what  I've  accomplished.'" 


that  he  had  basically  jettisoned.  His  last 
full-time  job  had  been  as  a  reporter  with 
WHYY,  the  local  public-radio  station  in 
Philadelphia.  He  had  started  at  the  station 
in  the  summer  of  1979,  and  for  some  of 
that  time,  as  a  member  of  a  staff  putting 
out  a  local  version  of  All  Tilings  Consid- 
ered called  91  Report,  much  of  his  work 
had  been  of  high  quality. 

But  he  was  something  of  a  manipulator, 
say  those  who  worked  with  him,  particu- 
larly since  he  knew  that  his  talent  was  in 
demand.  "I  wanted  it  to  work,"  says  a  for- 
mer colleague.  "I  wanted  his  voice  and  I 
wanted  the  voice  he  represented  on  the 
air.  I'm  not  at  all  surprised  at  his  ability  to 
get  people  to  buy  into  what  he  wants  them 
to,  because  that's  what  he  did  to  me." 

In  January  of  1981,  Philadelphia  maga- 
zine listed  Abu-Jamal  in  its  group  of  "81  to 
Watch."  But  the  mention  seemed  almost 
silly.  Colleagues  say  that  his  work  habits  at 
the  station  had  begun  to  deteriorate  serious- 
ly. Increasingly,  other  reporters  had  to  cov- 
er for  him  because  he  could  not  be  found. 


I  oiiner  journalistic  colleagues  say  there 
were  indications  that  he  was  having  person- 
al and  financial  problems.  And  he  was  in- 
creasingly falling  into  lockstep  with  a  mili- 
tant and  radical  group  in  Philadelphia 
called  MOVE,  In  May  1980,  nine  of  its  mem- 
bers had  been  convicted  in  the  death  of  a 
police  officer  during  a  shoot-out.  And  be- 
cause Abu-Jamal  frequently  covered  move 
for  the  station,  there  were  constant  con- 
cerns over  his  reportorial  bias,  to  the  point 
where  it  wasn't  uncommon  for  entire  pieces 
to  be  re-edited.  "His  behavior  at  the  station 
was  really  out  of  control,"  says  a  former 
colleague.  "He  looked  like  a  guy  who  was 
high.  He  acted  like  a  guy  who  was  high." 

Toward  the  end,  Abu-Jamal  had  be- 
come a  "virtual  no-show,"  according  to 
another  former  colleague.  Then,  after  he 
vanished  for  three  days  with  the  station's 
staff  car,  he  was  asked  to  resign. 

n  the  media,  Abu-Jamal  has  been  por- 
trayed as  a  journalist  whose  reportage  on 
police  brutality  and  misconduct,  particu- 
larly in  the  aftermath  of  the  move  shoot- 
out, made  him  an  open  target  for  the  po- 
lice department.  "To  uniformed  men 
in  mourning  for  one  of  their  own," 
wrote  Doctorow,  "he  was  an  ene- 
my delivered  to  their  mercies." 
The  statement  is  powerful 
and  provocative,  and  it  adds  to 
the  legend  that  has  blossomed 
around  Abu-Jamal  since  his  in- 
carceration. Abu-Jamal  reported 
on  a  variety  of  topics,  including 
the  police,  according  to  Weinglass. 
In  one  of  his  books,  Abu-Jamal  re- 
counted an  incident  in  which  an  officer  in 
a  patrol  car,  upon  seeing  him,  smiled  and 
molded  his  fingers  into  the  shape  of  a  gun. 
But  by  numerous  accounts  Abu-Jamal 
did  virtually  no  original  reporting  on  po- 
lice brutality,  and  Weinglass  acknowledges 
that  he  doesn't  know  whether  any  of  the 
officers  arriving  on  the  scene  that  night 
had  any  idea  of  who  he  was. 

"I  was  involved  right  in  the  middle  of 
this  whole  police-misconduct  business," 
says  George  Parry,  who  was  in  charge  of 
a  unit  of  the  district-attorney's  office  that 
was  established  in  1978  to  prosecute  po- 
lice officers  for  excessive  force.  "Mumia 
Abu-Jamal  just  was  not  a  factor.  I  don't 
have  any  recollection  of  having  spoken  to 
him.  It  appears  to  be  a  triumph  of  propa- 
ganda over  truth.  You  have  to  give  him 
credit  for  that.  The  notion  that  Jamal  has 
been  framed  because  he  was  a  critic  of 
the  police  is  just  a  hideous  lie." 

William  Marimow,  whose  reportage  on 
police  brutality  (along  with  Jonathan 
Neumann's)  earned  The  Philadelphia  In- 
quirer the  Pulitzer  Prize  for  public  service 
in  1978,  also  has  no  recollection  of  Abu- 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST      1999 


I  i 

n  writiiit,  U  II      ibehalf. 
been  descnilH  I  a  "wi< 


thing  on  the  subject. 

:>  everyone  who  wrote 
bolice  violence,"  says 

managing  editor  of 
"This  guy  didn't  reg- 
idar  screen." 


Abu-Jamal  has 
widely  acclaimed" 

lournalist  whe*  lie  worked  in  Philadel- 

II  phia,  a  "voice  of  t  le  voiceless."  But  after 

I  his  departure  from  WHYY,  says  a  former 

friend,  he  actually  became  a  "lost  voice— 

I  his  voice  was  lost."  This  friend  saw  in  him 

an  increasing  grimness  i     his  obsession 

with  move  intensified.  And  while  he  never 

saw  Abu-Jamal  react  violent. y  to  anything 

(Abu-Jamal  had  no  criminal  1  "cord  before 

the  shooting),  he  did  sense  in  him  "a  lot 

of  pent-up  emotion.  Some  of  it  vas  anger. 

Some  of  it  was  frustration.  Frus  ration  at 

his  inability  to  make  the  media  a  platform 

for  [his]  sociopolitical  views." 

From  time  to  time,  Abu-Jamal  isited 
the  city-hall  newsroom  where  he  had  '•nee 
been  a  fixture,  but  there  was  less  and  less  to 
talk  about  with  his  acquaintances  there.  "I 
wasn't  so  anxious  to  see  Mumia  after  > 
while,"  says  the  former  friend.  "Brief  con 
versations  would  lapse  into  this  disaffec- 
tion with  the  media.  By  that  time  he  was 
no  longer  an  effective  sounding  board  for 
me.  He  had  become  so  disconnected." 

The  friend  thought  Abu-Jamal  was  ba- 
sically lost,  straddling  two  worlds.  "He 
found  himself  neither  part  of  the  revolu- 
tion nor  part  of  the  mainstream,"  he  says. 
"What  the  hell  was  he?" 

By  the  time  Abu-Jamal  was  found  on 
the  curb  by  the  police,  he  wasn't  working 
as  a  radio  journalist  at  all.  Instead,  he 
was  driving  a  cab.  "Mumia  was  not  an 
award-winning,  crusading  journalist  when 
he  killed  this  cop,"  says  a  former  col- 
league. "He  was  a  journalist  who  had  lost 
his  job,  who  was  having  a  personal  crisis." 

Others  who  knew  Abu-Jamal  vigorous- 
ly dispute  that  description.  E.  Steven 
Collins,  a  highly  regarded  radio  figure  in 
Philadelphia  who  became  quite  close  to 
Abu-Jamal,  said  he  never  saw  any  change 
in  his  temperament  after  the  split  from 
WHYY  Several  hours  before  the  shooting, 
Collins  said,  Abu-Jamal  came  to  his  house 
for  spaghetti.  He  "was  in  a  great  mood," 
said  Collins,  and  stayed  until  11  p.m. 

When  Police  Officer  Robert  Shoe- 
maker approached  Abu-Jamal  about 
five  hours  later,  he  was  sitting  at  the 
end  of  the  curb,  with  a  bullet  wound  in 
his  chest  from  Faulkner's  gun.  Abu- 
Jamal's  right  arm  was  crossing  his 
chest,  Shoemaker  later  said  in  court 
testimony,  and  his  left  hand  was  on  the 
ground.  Shoemaker  ordered  Abu-Jamal 
to  freeze,  but  instead,  said  Shoemaker 


in  court,  Abu-Jamal's  arm  started  to  move 
to  his  left.  Shoemaker  again  ordered  Abu- 
Jamal  to  freeze.  It  was  then  that  Shoemaker 
saw  a  gun  approximately  eight  inches  from 
Abu-Jamal's  hand.  When  Abu-Jamal  did 
not  halt,  according  to  testimony,  the  officer 
kicked  him  in  the  throat  to  get  him  away 
from  the  gun.  Abu-Jamal  then  fell  back- 
ward, saying,  "I'm  shot.  I'm  shot." 

It  would  later  be  determined  that  the 
gun  Shoemaker  saw— a  .38  Charter  Arms 
undercover  special  worn  in  a  shoulder 
holster— belonged  to  Abu-Jamal  and  had 
been  purchased  by  him  nearly  two  and  a 
half  years  earlier.  The  gun  had  five  empty 
cartridges  in  its  chamber.  While  subse- 
quent ballistics  examination  by  the  prose- 
cution could  never  specifically  match  the 
bullet  extracted  from  Faulkner's  skull  to 
Abu-Jamal's  gun,  it  was  determined  that 
the  bullet's  markings— eight  lands  and 
eight  grooves  with  a  twist  to  the  right- 
were  consistent  with  the  type  of  revolver 
that  belonged  to  Abu-Jamal. 

Lawyers  working  for  Abu-Jamal  have 
offered  a  variety  of  theories  about  what 
happened  that  night,  but  the  one  they  re- 
fer to  the  most  is  that  Faulkner  was  shot 
by  an  unknown  gunman  who  then  fled. 
But  in  statements  given  to  the  police  rough- 
ly within  an  hour  of  the  incident,  four  dif- 
ferent witnesses— none  of  whom  knew  any 
of  the  others— described  crucial  stages  of 
Abu-Jamal's  actions  at  the  scene.  Three  of 
those  witnesses  made  their  identification 
of  Abu-Jamal  directly  at  the  scene.  (The 
fourth  could  not  identify  Abu-Jamal  that 
night,  but  at  trial  correctly  identified  the 
clothes  he  had  worn.) 

The  assistant  district  attorney  who  tried 


JUSTICE  DECRIED    » 
Above:  Abu-Jamal  escorted  to  a 
hearing  at  which  he  requested  a    < 
retrial,  August  15,  1995.  Right:  more    l- 
than  3,500  supporters  attended  a 
"Save  Mumia"  rally  in  Philadelphia 


the  case,  Joseph  McGill,  points  out,  "This 
is  not  a  situation  where  someone  was  ar- 
rested and  brought  back  to  the  scene.  In 
this  case,  [Abu-Jamal]  never  left  the  scene, 
because  he  was  shot  in  the  chest.  You  can- 
not get  a  better  identification  than  that." 

Not  all  of  those  witnesses  saw  every  sin- 
gle moment  of  the  fatal  shooting.  Only 
one  testified  to  actually  seeing  Abu- 
Jamal  with  a  gun  in  his  hand.  But  another 
testified  that  he  had  heard  the  shots  and 
then  seen  Abu-Jamal  stand  over  the  offi- 
cer, with  his  hand  in  the  clear  gesture  of 
firing.  Taken  together,  the  accounts  of 
those  four  witnesses  formed  a  consistent 
picture  of  what  happened  that  night: 

The  driver  of  the  Volkswagen,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  Abu-Jamal's  younger  brother 
William  Cook,  was  spread-eagled  against 
the  side  of  the  car.  Cook,  25,  turned  to 
take  a  swing  at  Faulkner,  and  Faulkner  re- 
sponded with  force  of  his  own,  perhaps 
a  flashlight  or  a  billy  club.  Abu-Jamal, 
whose  cab  was  parked  across  the  street, 
then  came  running  through  a  parking  lot. 
He  fired  at  least  one  shot  at  Faulkner's 
back  and  Faulkner  fell.  Abu-Jamal  stood 
at  Faulkner's  feet  and  fired  several  more 
times,  hitting  Faulkner  in  the  face.  Abu- 
Jamal  sat  down  on  the  curb,  obviously  de- 
bilitated by  the  bullet  wound  to  his  chest. 
Meantime,  Abu-Jamal's  brother  stood  by 
the  wall  along  the  sidewalk  with  a  shocked 
expression  on  his  face.  (When  police  ar- 
rived at  the  scene.  Cook's  first— and  only- 
words  about  what  had  happened  were  not 
in  defense  of  his  brother,  or  about  a  gun- 
man who  had  fled  the  scene.  They  were: 
"I  ain't  got  nothing  to  do  with  it.") 

Of  the  four  witnesses  who  testified  for 
the  prosecution,  two  were  hardly  angels. 
The  only  witness  who  said  she  saw  the  gun 
was  a  woman  named  Cynthia  White,  whose 
record  included  at  least  38  arrests  for  pros- 


"[Abu-Jamal]  never  left  the 
scene,"  says  Joseph  McGill. 
"You  cannot  get  a  better 
identification  than  that." 


"i^ 


:* 


Hm&iiP 


-*  ilu?  iiir 


"Egnsm 


AUGUST     1999 


he  saw 

aed  Kob- 

il  ition  for 

I'm    an  empty 

tion,  his 

end  >i  While's 
m  ide  known  to 
iction  was  not.  be- 
cause the  judge  ruled  that  it  was  inadmism- 
ble  on  :  I  basis  thai  it  was  not  a  crime 
indicating  falsehood.  Both  witnesses  were 
intensively  cross-examined  by  the  attorney 
representing  Abu-Jamal,  mk\  then  accounts 
o\  what  happened  that  night  remained 
in  m  1  know  who  shot  the  eop  and  I  ain't 
going  lo  forget  it,"  Chobert  testified  in  1982. 

Two  Other  witnesses,  a  Philadelphia  po- 
lice officer  and  a  security  guard  at  the  hos- 
pital where  Abu-Jamal  was  taken,  testified 
that  they  heard  Abu-Jamal  confess  to  shoot- 
ing Faulkner,  Officer  Garry  Bell  said  he 
heard  Abu-Jamal  say  in  the  hospital,  "I 
shot  that  motherfucker  and  I  hope  the 
motherfucker  dies."  Bell  did  not,  however, 
report  hearing  the  confession  until  77  days 
after  the  crime  had  occurred,  prompting 
the  defense  to  suggest  vigorously  that  he 
had  concocted  what  he  heard  (par- 
ticularly given  that  another  police 
officer  who  had  been  with 
Abu-Jamal  the  night  of  the 
shooting  filed  a  report  stating 
that  the  suspect  had  made  no 
comments).  But  the  security  guard, 
Priscilla  Durham,  also  testified  to 
having  heard  Abu-Jamal  say  at  the  hos- 
pital, "I  shot  the  motherfucker  and  I  hope 
the  motherfucker  dies."  Furthermore,  she 
testified  that  she  had  reported  the  state- 
ment to  hospital  investigators  the  next  day. 

Prosecutor  McGill  doesn't  describe  the 
evidence  as  simply  strong.  Instead,  he 
calls  the  case  against  Abu-Jamal  "the 
strongest  homicide  case  I  have  ever  tried," 
during  a  career  that  spanned  approximate- 
ly 125  homicide  cases  before  McGill  went 
into  private  practice,  in  1986. 

The  testimony  of  the  eyewitnesses,  says 
McGill,  was   "absolutely  unavoidable   in 

terms  of  truth [Abu-Jamal]  never  left  the 

scene.  He  was  identified  by  witnesses  who 
never  left  the  scene."  The  only  thing  more 
persuasive,  he  says,  would  have  been  a 
video-camera  recording  of  what  happened. 

I  fter  reading  the  trial  transcript,  one 

II  could  reasonably  conclude  that,  in 
/  I  terms  of  fairness,  there  were  some  po- 
tentially troubling  developments.  There 
was  the  fact  that  the  case  was  tried  before 
a  judge,  Alfred  Sabo,  with  a  reputation  for 
being  pro-police  and  pro-prosecution,  rais- 
ing immediate  questions  about  the  impar- 
tiality of  any  trial  he  presided  over.  There 
was  the  question  of  whether  Abu-Jamal's 


efforts  t<>  represent  himself  were 

denied  by  Saho  in  the  midst  of  jui 
lion  (the  judge  justified  the  action 
basis  that  Abu-Jamal  was  taking  n 
and  scaring  potential  jurors  with  I 
proach).  There  was  the  possibility  thai  u 
resources  allotted  by  the  court  lor  Abu- 
Jamal's  representation,  roughly  $14,000, 
were  simply  inadequate  by  any  standard, 
since  he  was  facing  the  death  penalty. 
There  was  the  question  of  why  there  was 
no  testimony  on  his  behalf  either  from  a 
ballistics  expert  or  from  a  pathologist. 
There  was  the  question  of  why  witnesses 
who  might  conceivably  have  been  helpful 
in  advancing  the  defense  theory  that  an- 
other person  had  shot  Faulkner  were 
never  called. 

There  was  the  question  of  why  a  residue 
analysis  on  Abu-Jamal's  hands  was  not 
done  on  the  night  of  the  shooting.  A  pros- 
ecution expert  said  at  trial  that  such  a  test 
becomes  invalid  as  soon  as  someone 
touches  his  trousers  or  wipes  his  hands. 
Because  of  the  way  Abu-Jamal  struggled 


'1  know  who  shot  the  cop 
and  I  ain't  going  to  forget  if," 
testified  Robert  Chobert. 


Crime 


with  the  police  during  his  arrest,  there  was 
ample  opportunity  for  loss  of  residue,  but 
an  expert  retained  by  the  defense  after  the 
trial  said  that  such  tests  were  "frequently 
performed  when  a  suspect  was  apprehend- 
ed immediately  after  a  shooting  incident." 

Given  that  the  shooting  of  Faulkner  oc- 
curred so  suddenly  and  that  Abu-Jamal 
himself  was  shot,  some  observers  also 
wondered  why  a  claim  of  self-defense  was 
not  more  actively  pursued. 

Virtually  all  of  these  issues  were  raised 
on  appeal  to  the  Pennsylvania  Supreme 
Court,  however,  and  denied.  At  the  root 
of  the  verdict  was  Abu-Jamal's  own  con- 
duct—acting out  to  the  point  where  one 
newspaper  columnist  wrote  that  his  be- 
havior was  as  "bizarre  as  it  was  suicidal." 

On  numerous  occasions  the  judge,  af- 
ter repeated  warnings,  had  Abu-Jamal  re- 
moved for  continued  disruptions  and  ver- 
bal outbursts  such  as  these: 

"I  need  the  microphone  at  the  table." 

"You  have  ruled,  Judge?  This  is  not  to 
my  satisfaction." 

"I  don't  care  what  you  believe." 

"I'm  not  finished.  We  are  not  finished." 


.  doing  aracolleagues  say  there 
'hUAUl    veril  attuned  tt  was  having  person- 
1  W?  philadelpwa  )ns.  And  he  was  in- 
ab  now  thebekstep  with  a  mili- 

^Suimore  Sun.  in   in   Philadelphia 
'  \  lio  on  my  r^O,  nine  of  its  mem,,. 
>islcr  a  "*  J  in  the  dking  com- 

plete contru ,  ,s  on  his  thoot-oien  aggressive- 
ly became  a  negated  a^ntly.nis  defense." 

Weinglass  says  tha  Verm-Jamal  began  to 
act  up  in  court  only  afiW  his  right  to  repre- 
sent himself  was  tak'  d  away.  In  fact,  Abu- 
Jamal's  behavior  hid  been  disruptive  dur- 
ing the  previous  proceedings  against  him. 
At  a  pre-trial  h  aring  about  a  month  earli- 
er, he  had  called  the  presiding  judge  a 
"bastard"  am.  had  told  him  to  "go  to  hell." 

Much  c  what  Abu-Jamal's  defenders 
have  laimed,  however  tantalizing,  is 
still  i  ^substantiated  despite  nearly  eight  ' 
years  of /investigation.  Weinglass  concedes 
that  Ayu-Jamal  headed  across  the  street 
that  r^ht  from  the  parking  lot  after  see- 
ing ,*tis  brother  grapple  with  Faulkner. 
But/ it  is  his  theory  that  Faulkner,  in  the 
ac/  of  trying  to  subdue  one  black  male 
Ad  seeing  another  black  male  running  at 
him,  took  out  his  gun  and  shot  Abu- 
Jamal.  Faulkner  in  turn  was  shot  by 
someone  else,  who  fled  the  scene. 
At  lengthy  hearings  in  1995  and 
1996  in  Philadelphia,  lawyers  seek- 
ing a  new  trial  for  Abu-Jamal  called 
six  witnesses  to  indicate  that  some- 
one else  had  done  the  shooting.  But 
three  of  them,  in  statements  given  years 
earlier  or  in  their  own  testimony  during 
the  hearings,  had  said  they  did  not  witness 
the  actual  shooting  but  saw  someone  flee- 
ing only  after  shots  had  been  fired.  The 
fourth,  who  said  that  Faulkner  had  been 
shot  by  a  passenger  in  the  Volkswagen, 
also  said  that  there  was  a  helicopter  with  a 
searchlight  on  the  scene  (no  other  witness- 
es saw  a  helicopter)  and  that  Faulkner,  af- 
ter being  shot  in  the  head,  whispered, 
"Get  Maureen  ...  get  the  children." 

If  in  fact  Faulkner  had  already  been 
shot  in  the  face,  as  the  witness  said,  it 
would  have  been  virtually  impossible  for 
Faulkner  to  talk.  Furthermore,  he  had  no 
children.  The  fifth  witness  said  that  Faulk- 
ner was  shot  by  two  different  people,  an 
assertion  that  was  contradicted  by  all  phys- 
ical and  medical  evidence  in  the  case.  The 
sixth  ended  up  giving  brief  testimony  that 
substantiated  the  prosecution's  account  of 
what  happened  that  night. 

Much  of  what  Abu-Jamal's  supporters 
point  to,  while  deeply  troubling  (such 
as  the  fact  that  115  of  the  130  prison- 
ers on  Pennsylvania's  death  row  from 
Philadelphia  are  members  of  a  minority), 
has  nothing  directly  to  do  with  the  facts  al' 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


MY 


I  III 
1 


imi 

IUl     IKIV 
HIS      I 

lie  entire 

.\  ho  in 

i  The  New 

i.'.nial.  But 

Doctorow  also  says  that  a  full  reading  of 

the  transcript  is  n  i     to  see  the 

obvious  unfairness  oi  the  proceedings,  and 

thai  efforts  to  dismiss  support  lor  Abu- 

Jamal  as  the  predictable  leanings  of  "arm- 

and   sentimental  bleeding 

hearts'  are  convenient  and  misguided. 

"  I  here  is  cue  issue  here,"  says  Doc- 
torow.  "Whether  he  got  a  fair  trial  or  not. 
1  don't  know  if  he's  guilty  or  innocent. 
From  the  details  of  the  trial  and  the  por- 
tions of  the  transcript  I  read,  any  impar- 
tial juror  would  regard  it  as  something  of 
a  fiasco.  It's  inconceivable  to  me  that  un- 
less  someone   has  some  political   stake 


[rf:i;l']aLk'f']»-1ii]tli 


Above:  Maureen  Faulkner  with  her 

husband's  brothers,  from  left,  Kenneth, 

Thomas,  and  Patrick,  at  a  fund-raiser  to 

counter  Abu-Jamal's  public-relations 

campaign,  April  23,  1999.  Right:  Daniel 

Faulkner's  gravestone  at  a  cemetery 

near  Philadelphia. 


they  would  not  want  some  further  exami- 
nation of  this  whole  thing." 

Actor  Ed  Asner,  another  high-profile 
supporter  of  Abu-Jamal's,  has  also  not 
read  the  entire  trial  transcript.  "Could  I 
stay  awake?"  he  replies  when  asked  the 
question. 

Like  Doctorow,  Asner  says  his  involve- 
ment in  the  case  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Abu-Jamal's  guilt  or  innocence,  but  with 
the  issue  of  trial  fairness.  "Even  if  he  is 
guilty,  I  find  the  errors  and  mistakes,  the 
rancor  and  the  severity  of  his  sentencing, 


to  he  loo  damn  much,"  says  Asner.  point 
ing  i"  the  two  and  a  half  months  it  took 
lor  the  police  officer  to  report  Abu-Jamal's 
confession  and  to  the  lack  of  a  residue  test 

on  Abu-Jamal's  hands.  "I've  been  reading 
selective  pieces,  but  it  all  smells." 

Actor  Ossie  Davis,  who  along  with  ac- 
tor Mike  Farrell  co-chairs  a  committee 
that  raises  funds  for  Abu-Jamal's  defense 
and  has  been  actively  involved  in  a  num- 
ber of  death-penalty  cases,  says  that  he 
sees  no  point  in  reading  the  entire  trial 
transcript.  "We  the  people,  in  a  democra- 
cy, are  not  going  to  be  able  to  read  the 
transcript  of  all  the  cases  that  come  be- 
fore us.  I  take  the  word  of  attorneys,  the 
word  of  people  who  have  investigated. 

"We're  not  asking,  'Let  the  man  go. 
Free  political  prisoners.'  We  think  the 
facts  as  we  know  them  merit  a  new  trial 
for  Abu-Jamal." 

Alice  Walker,  who  gave  an  endorse- 
ment for  Abu-Jamal's  first  book,  says  that 
she  has  read  "tons  and  tons  of  every- 


"He  is  just  beautiful," 
novelist  Alice  Walker  says 
of  Abu-Jamal.  "He  has  a 
lot  of  light.  He  reminds  me 
of  Nelson  Mandela/7 


.&&&>'-- 


£7 


thing"  about  the  case,  but  that  it  is  her 
recollection  that  she  has  read  "bits  and 
pieces"  of  the  trial  transcript.  Neverthe- 
less, she  has  come  to  an  emphatic  conclu- 
sion about  the  case  that  she  says  reminds 
her  of  the  racist  frame-ups  that  took  place 
in  the  Deep  South.  "I  don't  have  any 
doubt  that  Mumia  was  framed,"  says 
Walker.  "None.  In  fact,  what  I  think  hap- 
pened is  that  he  was  actually  trying  to 
help  Faulkner." 

Walker  has  visited  Abu-Jamal  twice  in 
prison,  and  her  impression  of  him  is  dis- 
tinct. "He  is  just  beautiful,"  she  says.  "He 


is  a  beautiful  person.  He  is  intelligent.  He 
is  compassionate.  He  has  a  lot  of  light. 
He  reminds  me  of  Nelson  Mandela." 

Buoyed  by  such  support,  Abu-Jamal's 
legal  team,  which  has  already  spent 
several  hundred  thousand  dollars,  con- 
tinues to  scour  for  new  witnesses.  It  also 
continues  to  suggest  new  possibilities  of 
how  Faulkner  was  killed,  including  one 
recently  made  by  Weinglass  that  the  offi- 
cer may  have  been  set  up  for  execution  by 
members  of  his  own  department  because 
of  a  suspicion  that  he  was  an  F.B.I,  infor- 
mant in  an  investigation  of  police  corrup- 
tion. He  offers  no  concrete  proof  for  this 
theory— just  one  loop-the-loop  of  conspir- 
acy after  another.  The  very  fact  that  he 
would  suggest  it  conveys  a  certain  desper- 
ation on  the  part  of  the  defense  in  trying 
to  suggest  an  alternative  version  of  what 
happened  that  night.  But  it  also  gives  sup- 
porters one  more  theory  to  disseminate 
over  the  Internet  and  preach  on  college 
campuses,  a  myth  that,  if  repeated 
enough,  could  begin  to  carry  the  au- 
thority of  absolute  truth. 

Philip  Bloch  says  that  it  was  a  re- 
action of  "disgust"  to  Abu-Jamal's 
supporters  that  made  him  come  for- 
ward several  months  ago  with  what 
he  says  was  an  admission  by  Abu- 
Jamal  to  killing  Faulkner.  Bloch  says 
he  learned  of  Abu-Jamal  as  part  of 
his  volunteer  work  for  the  Penn- 
sylvania Prison  Society,  through 
another  death-row  inmate  he  was 
working  with  at  the  time.  He  and 
Abu-Jamal  developed  an  "intellectual  friend- 
ship" grounded  in  similar  backgrounds  in 
the  left-wing  movement,  says  Bloch,  and 
talked  on  a  variety  of  subjects— philoso- 
phy, history,  prison  life.  (Discussion  of 
Abu-Jamal's  case  never  came  up,  perhaps 
because  Bloch,  based  on  his  own  exami- 
nation of  the  case  through  newspaper 
clippings,  had  concluded  that  Abu-Jamal 
was  almost  certainly  guilty.) 

It  was  in  the  course  of  one  such  con- 
versation that  Bloch  talked  to  Abu-Jamal 
about  the  use  of  violence  and  whether  it 
might  be  an  acceptable  alternative  in  the 
advancement  of  a  cause.  It  was  in  that 
context,  Bloch  says,  that  he  asked  Abu- 
Jamal  if  he  had  any  regrets  over  killing 
Faulkner,  and  Abu-Jamal  replied  with  a 
one-word  answer  of  "yes." 

"There  was  a  long  pause,"  Bloch  re- 
members. "I  think  we  probably  realized 
what  he  had  just  done." 

Bloch  did  not  ask  Abu-Jamal  to  elabo- 
rate, and  the  conversation  turned  toward 
other  subjects.  "It  wasn't  something  I 
planned  in  advance,"  he  says  of  the  ques- 
tion. "It  was  just  in  the  flow  of  the  con- 
versation. The  opportunity  to  ask  such  a 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


Cellular  Case  No.  283 


;alabasas,  C 


"The  static  was  so  strong, 

it  drowned  out  Emma. 

Mister,  whatever  can  do 

that  ain't  human." 


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©1999  Sprint  Spectrum  L.P.  All  rights  reserved.  Sprint,  Sprint  PCS  and  the  diamond  logo  are  registered  trademarks  of  Sprint  Communication]  Company  I.  P. 
used  under  license.  Sprint  PCS  Phone  is  a  trademark  of  Sprint  Communications  Company  L.P. 


I  veil 

■  I.  was 
pre 
Iced 

ttate- 
iid  it.  I 
oi  mis- 

lubstitute  teacher, 
kepi  the  contents  >>i  the  conversation  to  him- 
sell  fol  roughlj  seven  scais.  Hut  in  recent 
months,  Ik-  vi\s  the  tactics  of  Abu-Jamal 
supporters  increasingly  began  to  gnaw  at 
him.  "Maureen  I  aulkner  is  being  subjected 
to  such  calumny.  They're  trying  to  vilify  the 
memory  o(  her  husband  and  make  it  seem 
like  he  was  some  rogue  cop  that  was  out 
beaimg  Mumia's  brother.  So  I  see  that. 
That's  disgusting  enough.  1  see  the  lev- 
el of  hatred  that's  being  aroused  in 
people  towards  the  police.  And 
1  think  it's  just  crossed  a  line." 

Combing  the  Internet  one 
day,  Bloch  discovered  a  Web 
site  established  by  an  organiza- 
tion called  Justice  for  Police  Of- 
ficer Daniel  Faulkner.  He  read 
some  of  the  contents,  and  sent 
an  E-mail  in  early  April  that 
said:  "There  is  at  least  one  person 
to  whom  Mumia  has  admitted  kill- 
ing. Officer  Faulkner  and  that  person  may 
be  willing  to  break  his  silence  on  the  mat- 
ter." In  a  second  E-mail,  Bloch  revealed  his 
name  and  phone  number,  and  has  since 
given  a  statement  to  a  detective  from  the 
Philadelphia  Police  Department. 

Bloch  says  that  his  decision  to  come 
forward  was  not  an  easy  one.  He  has  not 
spoken  with  Abu-Jamal  in  roughly  five 
years  after  letters  he  sent  to  the  inmate 
went  unanswered.  But,  says  Bloch,  "I  still 
have  a  lot  of  respect  for  him.  I  don't  think 
by  any  means  he's  proud  of  what  he  did. 
I'm  sure  that  if  he  had  to  do  it  all  over 
again  he'd  be  somewhere  else  that  night." 
But  in  the  absence  of  that,  says  Bloch, 
"It's  a  lot  easier  to  live  the  life  now  as  a 
martyr  than  as  a  cold-blooded  cop  killer." 


In  1994,  Maureen  Faulkner  asked  herself 
whether  she  would  publicly  respond  to 
the  swell  of  support  for  Abu-Jamal,  or 
whether  she  would  simply  step  aside.  The 
answer  came  when  she  learned  that  NPR 
was  planning  to  air  commentaries  by  Abu- 
Jamal  on  life  in  prison.  "I  believe  they 
were  going  to  make  him  their  poster  boy," 
she  says.  "That  was  the  beginning  of  it." 
She  called  members  of  management  at 
NPR,  who,  she  says,  told  her  that  Abu- 
Jamal  had  a  First  Amendment  right  to 
freedom  of  speech.  "Well,  what  about  my 
husband,  who  is  six  feet  under?"  she  re- 
sponded. "He's  lost  his  ability  for  his  free- 
dom of  speech." 


NPR  reversed  its  decision,  but  Aim 
i. mi. lis  radio  < ommentaries  later  surl 

on  the  Pacifies  Radio  Network.  I  aulkner 
was  driving  to  work  one  day  from  her 
home  in  California  and  was  Hipping 
through  stations  on  the  car  radio  when 
she  suddenly  heard  his  voice.  She  Hipped 
to  another  station,  then  flipped  back.  She 
started  to  shake  and  had  to  pull  oil"  to  the 
side  of  the  highway. 

Since  that  time,  Faulkner  has  consis- 
tently gone  to  battle  with  those  who  have 
promoted  the  case  and  cause  of  Abu- 
Jamal.  When  Addison-Wesley  published 
Abu-Jamal's  book,  in  1995,  she  personally 
hired  a  plane  to  fly  over  the  publisher's  of- 
fices in  Reading,  Massachusetts,  with  a  ban- 


Ami  they  were  popping  up.  these  fires, 
throughout  the  country,  throughout  the 
world,  and  I  kept  trying  to  put  them  out 
and  put  them  out." 

Faulkner  has  been  subjected  to  blister- 
ing attacks  on  her  credibility  as  well  as 
E-mail  missives  from  supporters  of  Abu- 
Jamal  that  have  said,  "Fuck  you"  and 
"Nobody  cares  about  you  or  that  piece 
of  shit  cop  that  deserved  to  die"  and 
"Get  your  head  out  of  your  ass." 

But  Faulkner  shows  no  signs  of  giving 
up.  "I  hope  someday  there  is  closure,  and 
I  just  believe  the  only  way  that  there  will  be 
closure  is  if  . . .  they  follow  out  what  a  jury 
of  12  had  decided.  I  am  not  the  one  who 
convicted  Jamal  of  murder.  A  jury  of  12 
did  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia,  where 
capital  punishment  is  imposed." 


"I  really  felt  as  though  I  was 
putting  out  the  fires  of  hell  alone/7 
Maureen  Faulkner  says  of  her 
campaign  against  Abu-Jamal. 


ner  that  read,  addison- 

WESLEY  SUPPORTS  COP  KILLERS.   In    1996, 

when  she  learned  that  HBO  was  planning 
to  air  a  documentary  that  would  leave  out 
key  elements  pointing  to  Abu-Jamal's  guilt, 
she  wrote  a  letter  to  Gerald  Levin,  the 
head  of  Time  Warner,  which  read  in  part: 
"The  facts  of  my  husband's  murder  are 
brutal  and  crystal  clear.  All  physical  evi- 
dence and  eyewitness  testimony  has  dem- 
onstrated over  and  over  again  that  Mumia 
Abu-Jamal  shot  my  husband  in  the  back, 
and  while  he  lay  face  up  and  conscious  on 
the  sidewalk  Jamal  emptied  his  gun  into 
my  wounded  husband's  face." 

When  she  learned  that  Whoopi  Gold- 
berg, who  has  been  a  visible  supporter  of 
Abu-Jamal's,  was  helping  to  host  a  50th- 
birthday  party  for  President  Clinton,  she 
wrote  a  telegram  to  the  president  that  said, 
"Do  you  want  someone  who  supports  a 
convicted  cop  killer  to  host  your  50th  birth- 
day? I  know  the  law  enforcement  across 
this  country  will  be  appalled."  (Two  months 
later  she  received  a  letter  from  then  chief  of 
staff  Leon  Panetta  that  said,  "The  President 
certainly  does  not  want  to  add  to  your  grief 
and  was  very  sorry  to  hear  of  your  con- 
cerns. Let  me  assure  you,  however,  that  Ms. 
Goldberg's  participation  in  the  President's 
birthday  party  does  not  imply  that  he  en- 
dorses her  view  on  this  particular  matter") 

"I  really  felt  as  though  I  was  putting 
out  the  fires  of  hell  alone,"  Faulkner  says. 


n  the  end,  nearly  20  years 

after  the  murder  of  Officer 

Faulkner,  the  most  intriguing 

element  of  Abu-Jamal's  case  is 

all  that  it  doesn't  say. 

There  is  still  the  unexplained 
element  of  what  caused  Abu- 
Jamal  and  his  brother  William 
Cook  to  be  at  the  red-light  inter- 
section of  13th  and  Locust  Streets 
at  close  to  four  in  the  morning.  There 
is  still  the  unexplained  element  of  why 
Abu-Jamal,  even  with  a  reputation  for 
nonviolence,  had  purchased  a  gun  two 
and  a  half  years  prior  to  the  shooting. 
There  is  still  the  unexplained  element  of 
why  William  Cook  has  never  publicly  said 
a  word  about  the  shooting. 

There  is  also  the  silence  of  Abu-Jamal 
himself.  In  his  books,  in  his  columns, 
Abu-Jamal  has  spoken  out  on  virtually 
everything— the  killing  of  a  gay  man  in  Al- 
abama; the  killing  of  Amadou  Diallo  by 
police  in  New  York;  the  bombing  in  Iraq; 
Monica  and  Bill;  the  brutal  treatment  he 
said  he  received  from  police  the  night  of 
the  shooting  after  he  was  taken  to  the  hos- 
pital. But  there  is  one  element  missing 
from  Abu-Jamal's  prolific  body  of  work- 
any  account  of  what  happened  that  night 
when  Daniel  Faulkner  was  shot  to  death. 
Weinglass  insists  that  Abu-Jamal  is  ea- 
ger to  tell  what  took  place— as  long  as  it  is 
in  the  proper  legal  forum.  A  hearing  in 
federal  court  for  a  new  trial  would  be  the 
appropriate  setting,  says  Weinglass,  al- 
though he  also  acknowledges  there  is  no 
guarantee  that  such  a  hearing  will  ever  be 
granted.  "Let's  first  tell  the  story  the  first 
time  in  court,"  says  the  lawyer.  "If  we're 
blocked,  we'll  see  then.  Will  Mumia  go  to 
his  execution  if  it  comes  to  that,  without 
ever  telling  his  story?  The  answer  is  obvi- 
ously no."  In  the  meantime,  in  the  gaping 
void  of  that  silence,  his  supporters  con- 
tinue to  roar.  □ 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


BOSS 

HUGO       BOSS 


Available  at 

BOSS  Hugo  Boss  SHOPS 

Atlanta;  Bal  Harbour;  Beverty  Hills; 
Century  City;  Costa  Mesa;  Dallas; 
King  of  Prussia;  Las  Vegas; 
Mc  Lean;  Scottsdale;  Short  Hills; 
Troy;  Washington,  DC 
Bloomingdale's,  New  York; 
Burdine's,  Dadeland;  Cedrics, 
Edina;  Gary's,  Newport  Beach; 
Macy's.  New  York;  Macy's, 
San  Francisco;  Mano  s,  Seattle; 
Saks  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 

Opening  Fall  1999 
Buffalo;  Old  Orchard; 
Paramus;  White  Plains; 
Bloomingdale's,  Beverty  Center; 
Macy's,  Beverly  Center 

AND  ALL  LEADING 
OPTICAL  SHOPS 


New  York's  trustee 

impresario  of  cutting-edgt 

theater  arts  Harvey  Lichtenstein 

photographed  in  front  of  tin 

Brooklyn  Academy  of  Music  or 

April  12,  1999 


VANITY     FAIR     NOMINATES 


Harvey  Lichtenstein 


ecause  in  the  32  years  he  headed  the  Brooklyn 
Academy  of  Music  (bam)  he  turned  it  from  a  tired-out  concert 
hall  where  Caruso  had  once  sung  into  the  leading  showcase  of 
avant-garde  performing  arts  in  America,  because  he  did  this  in 
culture-lite  Brooklyn,  bereft  by  the  time  he  arrived  on  the  scene 
even  of  the  Dodgers  and  its  only  major  newspaper,  the  Eagle. 
because  he  consistently  showed  faith  in  the  brightest  native  vision- 
aries—Robert Wilson,  Philip  Glass,  Laurie  Anderson,  Merce  Cun- 
ningham, Trisha  Brown,  Twyla  Tharp,  John  Adams,  Peter  Sellars, 
Mark  Morris,  Bill  T.  Jones  and  Arnie  Zane.  because  he  also  im- 
ported the  best  work  of  the  most  serious  international  artists- 


English  director  Peter  Brook,  Swedish  director  Ingmar  Bergman, 
French  director  Ariane  Mnouchkine,  German  choreographer  Pina 
Bausch,  France-based  American  opera  director  William  Christie. 
because  he  nurtured  a  local  symphony  orchestra  and  created  the 
Next  Wave  Festival  for  works  by  everyone  from  Steve  Reich  to  Lou 
Reed  to  Tom  Waits,  because  over  the  years  his  baby  grew  to  such 
an  extent  that  he  added  a  second  building,  the  bam  Majestic 
Theater,  in  1987  and  a  film  complex  last  year.  BECAUSE  on  his  re- 
tirement this  month,  as  the  Majestic  becomes  the  bam  Harvey 
Lichtenstein  Theater,  he  leaves  New  York  art-lovers  with  a  world- 
renowned  center  of  entertainment.  —  wayne  lawson 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     ANNIE     LEIBOVITZ 


AUGUST     1999 


® 


Because  peace  and  quiet 

Your  brother-in-law  is  staying  another  two  weeks.  911  puts  you  on  hold.  The  cable  company  didn't  show 

aren't  going  to 

up  again.  That's  life.  If  you  want  peace  and  quiet,  you  just  have  to  find  ways  to  make  it  happen.  Like  Avalon. 

come  looking  for  you. 

It's  Toyota's  ultimate  way  to  escape  in  comfort.  And  get  ready  for  your  next  dose  of  the  real  world. 


TOYOTA 


OVOY^dw 


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in 


ft 


PICTU 


ST> 


om.oou«o9 


#•&* 


I  he  irrepressibly 

urotic  Albert  Brooks, 

photographed  on  the 

Universal  lot  in  Universal 

City,  California,  on 

January  14,  1999. 


THE  ESSENTIAL  BROOKS 

Despite  his  own  happy  ending-a  wife  and  new  baby-director 

Albert  Brooks  proves  he  can  still  turn  angst  into  comedy  with  The  Muse, 

casting  Sharon  Stone  as  a  goddess  of  Hollywood  burnouts 


IB  lbert  Brooks  fans  don't  get  a  fix  very  often,  but  "it's  not 
j^B  like  I'm  sitting  around,"  he  says.  It  can  take  years  to 
I  H  raise  the  money  for  his  movies,  which  are  never  box- 
I  ■■  office  smashes  but  are  cherished  by  smarl  people  who 
■        mk  prefer  mordant  wit  to  special  effects. 

And  who  but  Brooks  would  cast  Sharon  Stone  as  The  Muse, 
as  in  daughter  of  Zeus?  This  one  specializes  in  Hollywood  burn- 
outs like  the  desperate  screenwriter  (Brooks,  of  course)  who  has 
been  told  by  a  junior  studio  exec  that  he's  lost  his  creative  "edge." 

Brooks's  edge  was  apparent  even  in  childhood.  Johnny  Carson 
once  asked  Carl  Reiner  who  was  the  funniest  person  he  ever  met, 
and  Reiner  replied,  "A  12-year-old  kid  named  Albert  Einstein." 

Albert  eventually  changed  his  name,  but  not  his  uncompromis- 
ing humor.  When  he  refused  to  reshoot  Modern  Romance  to 


please  test  audiences,  Michael  Ovitz,  his  then  agent,  asked  why  he 
always  took  "the  hard  road."  Brooks  said,  "There's  an  easy  road?" 

Chronic  angst  also  characterized  his  love  life,  but  at  49  he  final- 
ly married  Web-site  designer  Kimberly  Shlain  in  the  kind  of  happy 
ending  he  would  never  use  on-screen.  Brooks  calls  his  10-month- 
old  son,  Jacob,  "the  greatest  thing  that  ever  happened  to  me." 

Domestic  bliss  notwithstanding,  the  essential  Brooks  endures. 
He  once  fretted  that  therapy  might  make  him  not  funny.  His 
shrink  replied,  "At  your  very  best  you're  going  to  have  so  many 
problems  that  I  wouldn't  worry  about  it." 

Second-guessing  his  choices  isn't  one  of  them.  David  Gef- 
fen  once  commented  that  Brooks  has  "never  had  the  career 
his  talent  deserves."  Brooks  says  firmly,  "I  have  no  regrets." 

i  i  si  ii    BENNETTS 


K2      |      VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     STEWART      SHINING 


AUGUST     1999 


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1 

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Kay  and 
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k         t 

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Imran  Khan  and  Tsria 
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Lucy  Ferry  and 
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*** 


In  London,  K£  toasted  its  European 

edition  with  more  than 

100  British  friends,  ranging  from 

I     the  literati  to  the  glitterati 
s  a  thank-you  to  the  many  British  friends  who  have  supported 
Vanity  Fair  throughout  the  years,  the  magazine  toasted  more 
than  100  guests  at  the  cavernous  Criterion  Brasserie  in  Pic- 
cadilly Circus.  Among  those  on  the  rarefied  guest  list  were 
novelists  Sebastian  Faulks,  Robert  Harris,  and  Auberon 
Waugh,  James  Fox  the  writer  and  James  Fox  the  actor,  and 
Imran  Khan,  just  off  the  plane  from  Pakistan,  and  his  wife,  Jemima. 
Fresh  from  directing  Madonna's  new  Max  Factor  commercials  was 
\  Alek  Keshishian,  who  mingled  with  Joan  Juliet  Buck,  David  Bailey, 

■  ean         John  Mortimer,  Eric  Clapton,  and  Luck,  Stock 
and  Two  Smoking  Barrels  stars  Nick  Moran 
and  Jason  Statham.  The  most  popular  guest? 
Kate  Reardon,  Elizabeth  Saltzman,      Gucd  q  g  q  Domenico  De  Sole,  whose  com- 

and  Jemima  Khan  »    r»  ^  11  i       ■     ■  j    j  i  t-v.i 

pany  s  fate  would  soon  be  decided  by  a  Dutch 

,  is.-.  court,  looking  relaxed  and  making  dozens  of 

i    new  friends.  — evgenia  peretz 


John  and  Penny 
Mortimer 


'• 


Trevor  Nunn  and 
Imogen  Stubbs 


I 


and  Jemima  Khan 


and  Jamess  and  Mary  El 


K 


Edna  O'Brien  and 
Richard.  Eyre 

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PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     JAMES     PELTEKIAN 


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_i  months  after  the  vicious  stabbing  of  Yale  senior 
d\  in  in  a  wealthy  neighborhood  near  campus,  the  entire  university  kno\ 
that  her  thesis  adviser,  39-year-old  former  dean  James  Van  de  Velde, 
is  a  suspect.  But  the  police  have  made  ho  arrest.  Will  this  become  the  Ivy  Leagu1 

version  of  the  JonBenet  Ramsey  ease? 

BY  SUZANNA  ANDREWS 


1 

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From  fop; 
The  grass  strip  at 
the  intersection  of  Edgehill  Road 
and  East  Rock  Road  where  Jovin  was 
found  dying  around  10  p.m.,  December  4, 
1998;  minutes  earlier  local  residents 
had  heard  a  man  and  woman  arguing, 
then  a  scream.  The  December  9,  1998, 
New  Haven  Register,  which 
linked  Van  de  Velde  with  the  killing. 
Jovin,  about  two  hours  before 
her  death,  at  a  pizza  party  for  the 
Best  Buddies  mentoring 
program  she  ran. 


<* 


I     he  weather  in  New  Haven,  Con- 
necticut, was  unusually  warm  the 
evening  of  December  4,   1998. 
Children  played  in  the  streets, 
and  people  were  out  walking 
their  dogs.  At  Yale  University, 
whose  vast  campus,  with  its  neo-Gothic  ar- 
chitecture, sprawls  through  the  center  of  the 
city,  students  were  out  in  shorts  and  T-shirts, 
throwing  Frisbees  on  the  college's  lawns.  The 
balmy  weather  made  it  a  perfect  night  for 
undergraduates  to  celebrate  the  end  of  fall- 
semester  classes  before  reading  week  and  final 
exams.  Parties  were  being  thrown  in  several  of 
Yale's  residential  colleges  and  in  off-campus 
student  apartments.  At 


)N  II  N  II  I    I)    ON     PAG  I 


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The  question 


MADISON  AVENJLi€  AT  SIXTY-SIXTH  STREET 


PIERCE  BROSNAN      RENE  RUSSO 


OPENS  AUGUST  6 


Letter  from  the  l\\  League 


omim  111  prom   r\(. i    si,  the  David 
S.  Ingalls  Rink,  situated  about  a  mile 
north  of  the  turrets  and  bell  towers  of 
the  main  campus,  hundreds  of  Yale 
students  and  faculty  were  out  in  force 
to  cheer  their  hockey  team  on  against 
Princeton.  For  nearly  three  hours— from 
7:30  until  approximately  10:00— they  sat 
in  the  bleachers  of  the  Eero  Saarinen- 
designed  building,  under  the  soaring 
roof  from  which  the  banners  of  Yale's 
hockey  rivals  and  its  12  residential  col- 
leges hang.  Screaming  themselves  hoarse, 
the  spectators  watched  the  Princeton  Ti- 
gers defeat  the  Yale  Bulldogs,  5-2. 

Less  than  a  mile  north  of  Ingalls  Rink, 
in  the  wealthy  East  Rock  neighborhood, 
with  its  huge  mansions  and  manicured 
lawns,  people  were  also  out  enjoying  the 
warm  weather.  Several  of  those  later  inter- 
viewed by  the  police  said  they  saw  nothing 
unusual.  LaJeune  Oxley,  who  lives 
at  the  corner  of  Edgehill  and  East 
Rock  Roads,  says  she  and  her  hus- 
band spent  most  of  that  evening  in 
their  kitchen  listening  to  Bach.  For 
some  reason  she  had  shut  the  kitch- 
en door.  If  she  hadn't,  Oxley  be- 
lieves, she  would  have  seen  or  heard 
something  that  might  have  enabled 
her  to  help  the  police  or  perhaps 
even  to  prevent  what  happened. 

As  it  was,  Oxley  heard  only  a  loud 
banging  on  her  front  door  just  after  10 
p.m.  She  walked  out  of  her  kitchen  and 
saw  immediately,  through  her  sitting-room 
window,  the  flashing  lights  of  the  police 
cars  and  the  ambulance  across  the  street. 
'As  soon  as  I  opened  the  door,  a  police 
officer  said,  'There's  a  lady  down,'"  Oxley 
recalls.  Terrified  that  something  had  hap- 
pened to  her  28-year-old  daughter,  Daphne, 
who  had  not  returned  from  walking  the 
family  dog,  Oxley  ran  across  the  street, 
where  a  young  woman  wearing  jeans  and 
boots  lay  near  the  curb.  Oxley  saw  right 
away  that  it  was  not  her  daughter.  The 
woman  was  Suzanne  Jovin,  a  21-year-old 
senior  at  Yale,  who  was  horribly  injured. 
About  15  minutes  later,  at  10:26,  Jovin 
was  pronounced  dead  at  Yale-New  Haven 
Hospital.  She  had  been  murdered  savage- 
ly, stabbed  17  times  in  the  back  and  neck. 

During  the  past  months,  Oxley  has 
gone  over  and  over  in  her  mind  the  details 
of  what  she  saw  that  night  and  of  what 
she  afterward  learned.  She  knows  that 
some  of  her  neighbors  heard  an  argument 
between  a  man  and  a  woman  around  9:45 
and,  shortly  after  that,  a  scream.  She  knows 
from  the  newspapers  that  no  weapon  has 
been  recovered.  The  mystery  of  how  some- 
one was  able  to  stab  Suzanne  Jovin  17 
times  in  a  well-lit  neighborhood  where 
people  were  out  walking  their  dogs  and 
where  at  least  one  party  was  going  on  is 


From  top:  JovThJs^ 

apartment,  directly  above 

a  police  station;  Jovin, 

second  from  left,  at  the 

Best  Buddies  1998 

Halloween  party;  a  poster 

distributed  by  the 

New  Haven  police. 


9    ^ 


smmam 

£!5s=s= 

""""""I  MM, 


among  the  many  strange  aspects 
of  that  night.  In  the  months  following  the 
murder,  the  questions  have  multiplied  and 
become  even  more  troubling. 

"You  see  that  tree  across  the  street?" 
says  Oxley,  looking  out  the  giant  bay  win- 
dow of  her  antique-filled  living  room  to 
a  towering  oak  across  East  Rock  Road. 
"The  body  was  right  next  to  that  tree.  She 
was  facedown.  Her  feet  were  almost  in 
the  street.  We  call  that  grassy  area  [be- 
tween the  curb  and  the  sidewalk]  the 
parkway;  the  body  was  across  the  park- 
way, at  an  angle.  She  looked  to  me  as 
though  she  was  trying  ...  to  get  to  that 
house  and  didn't  make  it."  says  Oxley. 


turning  away  from  the  win- 
dow with  a  stricken  expression.  "We 
have  lights  on  every  single  street  here. 
. . .   It's  not  secluded.   I  just  couldn't 
imagine  that  anything  like  that  could 
happen,  number  one  in  the  neighbor- 
hood and  then  certainly  not  there." 


It  took  several  hours  for  the  news  of 
Jovin's  murder  to  filter  into  the  Yale 
community.  The  first  student  to  learn 
that  she  was  dead— Amy  Chiou,  one  of  the 
victim's  freshman-year  roommates— was 
awakened  around  midnight  by  a  call  from 
the  police,  who  had  entered  Jovin's  apart- 
ment and  dialed  every  number  on  a  list 
taped  near  the  phone  until  they  reached 
someone.  Most  of  Jovin's  friends  were 
partying  that  night:  several  were  at  the 
movies.  Her  22-year-old  boyfriend,  Ro- 
man Caudillo,  an  engineering  student,  was 
on  his  way  back  to  New  Haven  after  spend- 
ing the  evening  in  New  York  City.  "The 
police  sent  a  car  to  get  Amy,  and  they 
took  her  to  identify  Suzanne's  body,"  says 
a  friend  of  Jovin's.  "The  police  told  her 
Suzanne  had  'expired.'  She  had  no  idea 
what  was  going  on.  She  thought  Suzanne 
had  gotten  into  a  problem  or  something. 
Amy  had  a  friend  with  her  who  said, 
'Amy,  she's  deud." 

By  noon  the  next  day,  many  had  heard 
the  terrible  news,  and  flowers  piled  up  at 


AUGUST     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


.     A. 


residen- 

ibl     I  in 
itmare 

<  liris- 
oore  lacro  sc  player 
.ii  Yale  man  was  shot 
ii  president's  house  as  he 
home  from  a  party  at  the  Au- 
relian  Society,  .1  seen  1  society  akin  to  the 
more  famous  skull  and  Bones.  Prince's 
murder  had  traumatized  the  university, 
which  responded  In  investing  more  than 
n1  million  in  campus  security.  Over  the 
years,  Vile  also  pumped 
millions  of  dollars  into  the 
troubled,  crime-ridden  neigh- 
borhoods that  surround  the 
spectacular  campus.  But 
Christian  Prince  was  the 
victim  of  a  random  killing. 
Suzanne  Jovin,  the  police 
believe,  was  murdered  by 
someone  she  knew. 

Jovin  was  last  reported 
seen  around  9:25  near  Phelps 
Gate,  the  main  entrance  to 
Yale  on  College  Street.  At  9:58,  someone 
called  911  to  report  that  a  woman  lay 
bleeding  on  the  corner  of  Edgehill  and 
East  Rock,  nearly  two  miles  away.  How 
had  Jovin  traveled  so  far  in  approximately 
30  minutes?  The  police  think  that  she 
must  have  been  driven  there,  and  her 
friends  are  certain  she  would  never  have 
accepted  a  ride  from  a  stranger.  But  whose 
car  had  she  gotten  into?  Who  could  have 
killed  her  so  brutally  and  left  no  clues? 
And  why  would  anyone  have  wanted  to 
kill  Suzanne  Jovin?  Brainy,  beautiful,  and 
hugely  popular,  she  was  considered  ex- 
traordinary, even  among  Yale's  overachiev- 
ers.  She  spoke  four  languages,  sang  in  the 
Bach  Society  Orchestra,  co-founded  Yale's 
German  club,  and  spent  much  of  her  free 
time  doing  volunteer  work,  tutoring  inner- 
city  children  and  running  a  program  for 
mentally  disabled  adults.  "Suzanne  was 
just  an  angel,"  says  Michael  Blum,  a  1998 
Yale  graduate  who  had  known  Jovin  since 
her  freshman  year. 


hat  no  one  was  prepared  for  was  the 
shocking  news  that  one  of  Yale's 
own— James  Van  de  Velde,  Jovin's 
3  8 -year-old  senior-essay  adviser— was  a 
suspect  in  her  killing.  Van  de  Velde  was 
a  brilliant  and  well-liked  political-science 
lecturer,  who  had  previously  held  posi- 
tions at  the  Pentagon  and  the  State  De- 
partment. He  was  also  a  1982  graduate  of 
Yale  and  a  former  dean  of  Yale's  Say- 
brook  College.  In  the  week  following  the 
stabbing,  Van  de  Velde  vehemently  denied 
any  involvement  in  the  crime  and  twice 
went  in  to  be  questioned  by  the  police 
without  bringing  a  lawyer.  He  gave  the 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


ramie 


poller  permission  to  search  his  red  Jeep 
Wrangler  and  Ins  apartment,  which  was  ;i 
half-mile  from  the  crime  scene.  According 
to  one  of  Ins  attorneys.  Van  de  Velde  also 
offered  to  take  a  blood  test  and  a  poly- 
graph oilers,  his  lawyer  says,  the  police 
did  not  act  on. 

As  the  weeks  wore  on,  Jovin's  murder 
became  more  and  more  mysterious.  F.B.I. 
specialists  in  profiling  the  perpetrators  of 
serial  murders  and  unusual,  often  psycho- 
logically based  crimes  tried  to  piece  to- 
gether a  portrait  of  the  killer.  Dr.  Henry 


"It  pains  us  terribly  to  imagine 
that  Suzanne  may  have  met  her 
fate  as  a  victim  of  her  very 
positive,  but  critical,  outlook." 


Lee,  Connecticut's  public-safety  commis- 
sioner and  a  well-known  forensics  expert 
who  worked  on  the  Nicole  Simpson  and 
JonBenet  Ramsey  murder  investigations, 
examined  the  clothes  that  Jovin  was  wear- 
ing the  night  she  was  killed.  The  New  Ha- 
ven police  searched  the  sewers  around  the 
crime  scene  and  enlisted  local  treasure 
hunters  to  comb  the  neighborhood  with 
metal  detectors;  hoping  to  find  witnesses, 
they  set  up  roadblocks  and  interviewed 
scores  of  people— including  Yale  students 
and  faculty  members.  In  March,  at  the  re- 
quest of  New  Haven  police  chief  Melvin 
Wearing,  who  acknowledged  that  the  in- 
vestigators had  hit  a  dead  end,  Connecti- 
cut governor  John  Rowland  offered  a 
$50,000  reward  for  information  leading  to 
the  arrest  and  conviction  of  Jovin's  killer. 
Still,  seven  months  later  no  arrest  has 
been  made.  "This  is  a  profoundly  unusual 
case,"  says  one  observer.  "It's  like  the  Jon- 
Benet Ramsey  case  of  New  Haven." 

In  January,  police  confirmed  that  Van 
de  Velde  was  "in  a  pool  of  suspects."  Al- 
though the  police  have  never  said  it  pub- 
licly, today  it  is  a  pool  in  which  he  seems 
to  be  swimming  alone.  How  he  could 
have  done  it  and  why,  and  how  he  could 
have  covered  his  tracks  so  thoroughly,  are 
baffling  questions  that  the  police  have  so 
far  not  publicly  answered.  "It  sounds  like 
they  have  zero  evidence,  zero,  against  Jim," 
says  his  attorney  Ira  Grudberg,  who  is 
one  of  Connecticut's  top  criminal  lawyers. 
And  yet  the  police  persist. 

"The  situation  has  been  so  extraordi- 
narily perplexing,"  says  Richard  Brod- 
head,  the  dean  of  Yale's  undergraduate 
college.  "Someone  has  been  murdered;  no 


one  knows  who  did  it  months  after  the 
fact.  Allegations  have  been  put  in  mo- 
tion. . .  .  There  is  a  confirmation  by  the 
police  that  he  is  a  suspect,  but  then  there 
is  no  arrest." 

(||f  hen  I  think  of  Suzanne,  I  mostly  re- 
member how  much  fun  she  was," 
says  a  woman  who  was  a  friend  of 
Jovin's  since  their  freshman  year.  "Suzanne 
laughed  a  lot. ...  At  Naples  [a  popular 
New  Haven  hangout]  she'd  go  nuts  when 
we  got  on  the  dance  floor. . . .  We  went 
caroling  freshman  year  and  had  so  much 
fun,  we  glommed  on  to  some  crazy  Chris- 
tian group,  and  we  ran  around  singing 
and  somehow  ended  up  drinking  schnapps 
all  night."  It  is  an  evening  in  late  April, 
right  before  exam  week,  and  three  friends 
of  Jovin's  have  agreed  to  meet  over  dinner 
at  Caffe  Adulis,  an  elegant  Eritrean  res- 
taurant near  the  campus,  to  talk  about  her. 
Over  elaborate  platters  of  African  food, 
they  recall  how  beautiful  Jovin's  singing 
voice  was,  how  much  she  loved  to  go  to 
the  theater,  how  much  fun  she  was  to 
laugh  with.  "Suzanne  was  sparkly,"  says 
one  friend.  "She  was  so  cool,"  says  anoth- 
er. Tonight  Jovin's  friends  want  to  focus  on 
happy  memories  of  her,  but  they  start  to 
cry  when  one  of  them  brings  out  pictures 
of  her.  The  photographs  show  a  beautiful 
young  woman  with  deep-blue,  slightly 
dreamy  eyes  and  a  dazzling  smile:  Su- 
zanne in  an  emerald-green  dress  on  the 
way  to  "Casino  Night"  freshman  year, 
Suzanne  in  Florida  sophomore  year,  and 
Suzanne  at  a  dinner  party  just  two  weeks 
before  she  was  killed.  "She  did  everything 
in  her  own  way,"  says  one  friend.  "She 
was  different,"  says  another. 


Suzanne  Nahuela  Jovin  had  not  lived  in 
the  United  States  before  she  arrived  at 
Yale  in  the  fall  of  1995.  She  was  born 
and  raised  in  Gottingen,  a  beautiful  me- 
dieval town  in  the  western  part  of  Ger- 
many. Her  parents,  Thomas  and  Donna 
Jovin,  are  American  scientists— molecular 
and  cell  biologists— who  work  there  at  the 
Max  Planck  Institute  for  Biophysical 
Chemistry.  The  elder  of  the  Jovins'  two 
daughters,  Suzanne  grew  up  living  in  a 
14th-century  castle;  by  the  time  she  was  a 
teenager,  she  had  traveled  extensively 
throughout  Europe  and  spent  vacations  in 
Mexico,  where  her  grandparents  lived. 
Suzanne  was  raised  "as  [an]  American  in 
Germany  with  all  that  implies,"  her  father 
wrote  in  one  of  a  series  of  E-mails  to  me. 
She  grew  up  speaking  English  and  Ger- 
man fluently,  although  German  was  the 
language  she  usually  spoke  with  her  sister 
and  closest  friend,  Rebecca,  who  is  20. 
Educated  in  the  rigorous  German  school 
system,  Suzanne  continued  on  paoi    »s 

AUGUST     1999 


AKE    CLEAR    CONTROL. 
TAKE    CLARITIN: 


. 


What  I  can't  controls 

■-:■  .■■-..•    i  • 

£p*f  "V  Bruises,  scrapes,  and  cuts 


Upper-management  decisions 


■ 


4     t       1 


What  I  can  control: 


The  miles  I  log 

My  career  moves 

How  I  live  my  life 

Where  and  when  I  take 
my  allergy  medication 


Once-a-day  I 

m      l^jf    Mm  Mm  m  Mr^^MmmMW  MM   M  «Jfl^^ 

10mg  (loratadine  rapidly-disintegrating  tablets) 

dissolves  on  your  tongue  without  water  for  relief  of  seasonal  allergy  symptoms 


alk  to  your  doctor  about  once-a-day,  nondrowsy,  mint-flavored  CLARITIN*  REDITABS*- for  people  ages  6 
ndup.  One  CLARITIN*  REDITABS*  tablet  relieves  your  seasonal  allergy  symptoms  all  day  without  making 
xi  sleepy.  CLARITIN*  REDITABS*  are  safe  to  take  as  prescribed:  one  tablet  daily.  At  the  recommended 
ose,  CLARITIN*  REDITABS*  are  nondrowsy.  The  most  common  side  effects  occurred  about  as  often  as  they 
id  with  a  sugar  pill,  including  headache,  drowsiness,  fatigue,  and  dry  mouth.  Please  see  next  page  for 
dditional  important  information.  Available  by  prescription  only.  SuA^  / 

Copyright©  199! 

all  1-888-833-0003  for  more  information  and  a  S5.00  rebate  certificate.  Or  visit  vvrww.claritin.com 


/(=)/ 


Copyright  ©  1999.  Schehng  Corporation. 
Kenilworth.  NJ  07033  All  hghts  reserved 
CZ0206/226 18008   2/99   Printed  in  U  S  A 


•.!  rs 


-  >'•<:     ascribing  Information ,  see  package  insert) 

CLARITIN  is  mini  ated  lor  the  relief  o(  nasal  and  non-nasal  symptoms 
iiu  i;w)i  chronic  idiopathic  urticaria  in  patients  6  years  of 

CONTRAINDICATIONS     I  LARITIN  Is  conlraindicated  in  patients  who  are  hypersensitive  to  this 

PRECAUTIONS:  General:  Patients  with  liver  impairment  or  renal  insufficiency  (GFR 
.  jo  mi, mm)  sho  Initial  dose  (10  mg  every  other  day).  (See  CLINICAL 

PHARMACOLOGY:  Special  Populations ) 

Drug  Interactions:  I  oratadine  (10  mg  once  daily)  has  been  coadministered  with  therapeutic 
tidin  ind  ketoconazole  in  controlled  clinical  pharmacology  studies  in 
ncreased  plasma  concentrations  (AUC  0-24  hrs)  ot  loratadine  and/or 
lera  observed  following  coadministration  of  loratadine  with  each  of  these 
drugs  in  normal  volunteers  (n  =  24  in  each  study),  there  were  no  clinically  relevant  changes  in  the 
safety  profile  of  loratadine,  as  assessed  by  electrocardiographic  parameters,  clinical  laboratory  tests, 
vital  signs,  and  adverse  events.  There  were  no  significant  effects  on  QTt  intervals,  and  no  reports  of 
sedation  or  syncope.  No  effects  on  plasma  concentrations  of  cimetidine  or  ketoconazole  were 
observed.  Plasma  concentrations  (AUC  0-24  hrs)  of  erythromycin  decreased  15%  with  coadminis- 
tration ot  loratadine  relative  to  that  observed  with  erythromycin  alone.  The  clinical  relevance  of  this 
difference  is  unknown.  These  above  findings  are  summarized  in  the  following  table: 

Fffects  on  Plasma  Concentrations  (AUC  0-24  hrs)  of  Loratadine  and  Descarboethoxvloratadine 


Erythromycin  (500  mg  Q8h) 
Cimetidine  (300  mg  QID) 
Ketoconazole  (200  mgQ12h) 


After  10  Davs  of  Coadministration 

(Loratadine  10  mo)  in  Normal  Volunteers 

Loratadine 

+  40% 

+103% 

+307% 


Descarboethoxvloratadine 
+46% 
+  6% 
+73% 


There  does  not  appear  to  be  an  increase  in  adverse  events  in  subjects  who  received  oral  contra- 
ceptives and  loratadine. 

Carcinogenesis,  Mutagenesis,  and  Impairment  of  Fertility:  In  an  18-month  carcinogenicity 
study  in  mice  and  a  2-year  study  in  rats,  loratadine  was  administered  in  the  diet  at  doses  up  to 
40  mg/kg  (mice)  and  25  mg/kg  (rats).  In  the  carcinogenicity  studies,  pharmacokinetic  assessments 
were  carried  out  to  determine  animal  exposure  to  the  drug.  AUC  data  demonstrated  that  the  expo- 
sure of  mice  given  40  mg/kg  of  loratadine  was  3.6  (loratadine)  and  18  (descarboethoxyloratadine) 
times  higher  than  in  humans  given  the  maximum  recommended  daily  oral  dose.  Exposure  of  rats 
given  25  mg/kg  of  loratadine  was  28  (loratadine)  and  67  (descarboethoxyloratadine)  times  higher 
than  in  humans  given  the  maximum  recommended  daily  oral  dose.  Male  mice  given  40  mg/kg  had  a 
significantly  higher  incidence  of  hepatocellular  tumors  (combined  adenomas  and  carcinomas)  than 
concurrent  controls.  In  rats,  a  significantly  higher  incidence  of  hepatocellular  tumors  (combined 
adenomas  and  carcinomas)  was  observed  in  males  given  10  mg/kg  and  males  and  females  given 
25  mg/kg.  The  clinical  significance  of  these  findings  during  long-term  use  of  CLARITIN  is 
not  known. 

In  mutagenicity  studies,  there  was  no  evidence  of  mutagenic  potential  in  reverse  (Ames)  or  for- 
ward point  mutation  (CHO-HGPRT)  assays,  or  in  the  assay  for  DNA  damage  (rat  primary  hepatocyte 
unscheduled  DNA  assay)  or  in  two  assays  for  chromosomal  aberrations  (human  peripheral  blood 
lymphocyte  clastogenesis  assay  and  the  mouse  bone  marrow  erythrocyte  micronucleus  assay).  In 
the  mouse  lymphoma  assay,  a  positive  finding  occurred  in  the  nonactivated  but  not  the  activated 
phase  of  the  study. 

Decreased  fertility  in  male  rats,  shown  by  lower  female  conception  rates,  occurred  at  an  oral  dose 
of  64  mg/kg  (approximately  50  times  the  maximum  recommended  human  daily  oral  dose  on  a 
mg/m2  basis)  and  was  reversible  with  cessation  of  dosing.  Loratadine  had  no  effect  on  male  or 
female  fertility  or  reproduction  in  the  rat  at  an  oral  dose  of  approximately  24  mg/kg  (approximately 
20  times  the  maximum  recommended  human  daily  oral  dose  on  a  mg/m2  basis). 

Pregnancy  Category  B:  There  was  no  evidence  of  animal  teratogenicity  in  studies  performed  in 
rats  and  rabbits  at  oral  doses  up  to  96  mg/kg  (approximately  75  times  and  150  times,  respectively, 
the  maximum  recommended  human  daily  oral  dose  on  a  mg/m2  basis).  There  are,  however,  no  ade- 
quate and  well-controlled  studies  in  pregnant  women.  Because  animal  reproduction  studies  are  not 
always  predictive  of  human  response,  CLARITIN  should  be  used  during  pregnancy  only  if  clearly 
needed. 

Nursing  Mothers:  Loratadine  and  its  metabolite,  descarboethoxyloratadine,  pass  easily  into  breast 
milk  and  achieve  concentrations  that  are  equivalent  to  plasma  levels  with  an  AUCmiik/AUCpiasma  ratio 
of  1.17  and  0.85  for  loratadine  and  descarboethoxyloratadine,  respectively.  Following  a  single  oral 
dose  of  40  mg,  a  small  amount  of  loratadine  and  descarboethoxyloratadine  was  excreted  into  the 
breast  milk  (approximately  0.03%  of  40  mg  over  48  hours).  A  decision  should  be  made  whether  to 
discontinue  nursing  or  to  discontinue  the  drug,  taking  into  account  the  importance  of  the  drug  to  the 
mother.  Caution  should  be  exercised  when  CLARITIN  is  administered  to  a  nursing  woman. 

Pediatric  Use:  The  safety  of  CLARITIN  Syrup  at  a  daily  dose  of  10  mg  has  been  demonstrated  in 
188  pediatric  patients  6-12  years  of  age  in  placebo-controlled  2-week  trials.  The  effectiveness  of 
CLARITIN  for  the  treatment  of  seasonal  allergic  rhinitis  and  chronic  idiopathic  urticaria  in  this  pedi- 
atric age  group  is  based  on  an  extrapolation  of  the  demonstrated  efficacy  of  CLARITIN  in  adults  in 
these  conditions  and  the  likelihood  that  the  disease  course,  pathophysiology,  and  the  drug's  effect 
are  substantially  similar  to  that  of  the  adults.  The  recommended  dose  for  the  pediatric  population  is 
based  on  cross-study  comparison  of  the  pharmacokinetics  of  CLARITIN  in  adults  and  pediatric  sub- 
jects and  on  the  safety  profile  of  loratadine  in  both  adults  and  pediatric  patients  at  doses  equal  to  or 
higher  than  the  recommended  doses.  The  safety  and  effectiveness  of  CLARITIN  in  pediatric  patients 
under  6  years  of  age  have  not  been  established. 

ADVERSE  REACTIONS:  CLARITIN  Tablets:  Approximately  90,000  patients,  aged  12  and  older, 
received  CLARITIN  Tablets  10  mg  once  daily  in  controlled  and  uncontrolled  studies.  Placebo- 
controlled  clinical  trials  at  the  recommended  dose  of  10  mg  once  a  day  varied  from  2  weeks'  to 
6  months'  duration.  The  rate  of  premature  withdrawal  from  these  trials  was  approximately  2%  in 
both  the  treated  and  placebo  groups. 

REPORTED  ADVERSE  EVENTS  WITH  AN  INCIDENCE  OF  MORE  THAN  2%  IN 

PLACEBO-CONTROLLED  ALLERGIC  RHINITIS  CLINICAL  TRIALS  IN  PATIENTS 

12  YEARS  OF  AGE  AND  OLDER 

PERCENT  OF  PATIENTS  REPORTING 


LORATADINE 

10mgQD 
n  =  1 926 


Headache 
Somnolence 
Fatigue 
Dry  Mouth 


PLACEBO 

n  =  2545 
11 
6 
3 
2 


CLEMASTINE 

1  mg  BID 
n  =  536 
8 

22 
10 
4 


TERFENADINE 

60mgBID 
n  =  684 
8 
9 
2 
3 


Adverse  events  reported  in  placebo-controlled  chronic  idiopathic  urticaria  trials  were  simile 
those  reported  in  allergic  rhinitis  studies 

Adverse  event  rates  did  not  appear  to  differ  significantly  based  on  age,  sex,  or  race,  although 
number  of  nonwhite  subjects  was  relatively  small. 

CLARITIN  REDITABS  (loratadine  rapidly-disintegrating  tablets):  Approximately  500  pati 
received  CLARITIN  REDITABS  (loratadine  rapidly-disintegrating  tablets)  in  controlled  clinical  tria 
2  weeks'  duration  In  these  studies,  adverse  events  were  similar  in  type  and  frequency  to  those ! 
with  CLARITIN  Tablets  and  placebo. 

Administration  of  CLARITIN  REDITABS  (loratadine  rapidly-disintegrating  tablets)  did  not  resi 
an  increased  reporting  frequency  of  mouth  or  tongue  irritation. 

CLARITIN  Syrup:  Approximately  300  pediatric  patients  6  to  12  years  of  age  recei 
10  mg  loratadine  once  daily  in  controlled  clinical  trials  for  a  period  of  8-15  days.  Among  these, 
children  were  treated  with  10  mg  loratadine  syrup  once  daily  in  placebo-controlled  trials.  Adv 
events  in  these  pediatric  patients  were  observed  to  occur  with  type  and  frequency  similar  to  tl 
seen  in  the  adult  population.  The  rate  of  premature  discontinuance  due  to  adverse  events  am 
pediatric  patients  receiving  loratadine  10  mg  daily  was  less  than  1%. 

ADVERSE  EVENTS  OCCURRING  WITH  A  FREQUENCY  OF  >  2%  IN  LORATADINE 

SYRUP-TREATED  PATIENTS  (6-12  YEARS  OLD)  IN  PLACEBO-CONTROLLED  TRIALS, 

AND  MORE  FREQUENTLY  THAN  IN  THE  PLACEBO  GROUP 

PERCENT  OF  PATIENTS  REPORTING 


LORATADINE 
10mgQD 
n  =  188 


PLACEBO 

n  =  262 


CHLORPHENIRAMI 

2-4  mg  BID/TID 
n  =  170 


Nervousness 
Wheezing 
Fatigue 
Hyperkinesia 
Abdominal  Pain 
Conjunctivitis 
Dysphonia 
Malaise 

Upper  Respiratory 
Tract  Infection 


In  addition  to  those  adverse  events  reported  above  (>  2%).  the  following  adverse  events 
been  reported  in  at  least  one  patient  in  CLARITIN  clinical  trials  in  adult  and  pediatric  patients: 

Autonomic  Nervous  System:  Altered  lacrimation,  altered  salivation,  flushing,  hypoesthe 
impotence,  increased  sweating,  thirst. 

Body  As  A  Whole:    Angioneurotic  edema,  asthenia,  back  pain,  blurred  vision,  chest  pain, 
ache,  eye  pain,  fever,  leg  cramps,  malaise,  rigors,  tinnitus,  viral  infection,  weight  gain. 

Cardiovascular  System:  Hypertension,  hypotension,  palpitations,  supraventricular  ta 
arrhythmias,  syncope,  tachycardia. 

Central  and  Peripheral  Nervous  System:  Blepharospasm,  dizziness,  dysphonia,  hyperto 
migraine,  paresthesia,  tremor,  vertigo. 

Gastrointestinal  System:  Altered  taste,  anorexia,  constipation,  diarrhea,  dyspepsia,  flatuler 
gastritis,  hiccup,  increased  appetite,  nausea,  stomatitis,  toothache,  vomiting. 

Musculoskeletal  System:    Arthralgia,  myalgia. 

Psychiatric:  Agitation,  amnesia,  anxiety,  confusion,  decreased  libido,  depression,  impaired  c 
centration,  insomnia,  irritability,  paroniria. 

Reproductive  System:    Breast  pain,  dysmenorrhea,  menorrhagia,  vaginitis. 

Respiratory  System:  Bronchitis,  bronchospasm,  coughing,  dyspnea,  epistaxis,  hemopty 
laryngitis,  nasal  dryness,  pharyngitis,  sinusitis,  sneezing. 

Skin  and  Appendages:  Dermatitis,  dry  hair,  dry  skin,  photosensitivity  reaction,  pruritus,  purpi 
rash,  urticaria. 

Urinary  System:  Altered  micturition,  urinary  discoloration,  urinary  incontinence,  urin 
retention. 

In  addition,  the  following  spontaneous  adverse  events  have  been  reported  rarely  during  the 
keting  of  loratadine:  abnormal  hepatic  function,  including  jaundice,  hepatitis,  and  hepatic  necro 
alopecia;  anaphylaxis;  breast  enlargement;  erythema  multiforme;  peripheral  edema;  and  seizures. 
OVERDOSAGE:  In  adults,  somnolence,  tachycardia,  and  headache  have  been  reported  with  o\ 
doses  greater  than  10  mg  with  the  Tablet  formulation  (40  to  180  mg).  Extrapyramidal  signs  and  | 
pitations  have  been  reported  in  children  with  overdoses  of  greater  than  10  mg  of  CLARITIN  Syr 
In  the  event  of  overdosage,  general  symptomatic  and  supportive  measures  should  be  institu 
promptly  and  maintained  for  as  long  as  necessary. 

Treatment  of  overdosage  would  reasonably  consist  of  emesis  (ipecac  syrup),  except  in  patie 
with  impaired  consciousness,  followed  by  the  administration  of  activated  charcoal  to  absorb 
remaining  drug.  If  vomiting  is  unsuccessful,  or  contraindicated,  gastric  lavage  should  be  perforn 
with  normal  saline.  Saline  cathartics  may  also  be  of  value  for  rapid  dilution  of  bowel  confer 
Loratadine  is  not  eliminated  by  hemodialysis.  It  is  not  known  if  loratadine  is  eliminated  by  peritor 
dialysis. 

No  deaths  occurred  at  oral  doses  up  to  5000  mg/kg  in  rats  and  mice  (greater  than  2400  and  1{ 
times,  respectively,  the  maximum  recommended  human  daily  oral  dose  on  a  mg/m2  basis).  Sin 
oral  doses  of  loratadine  showed  no  effects  in  rats,  mice,  and  monkeys  at  doses  as  high  as  10  tin 
the  maximum  recommended  human  daily  oral  dose  on  a  mg/m2  basis. 


Schering  Corporation 
Kenilworth,  NJ  07033  USA 


Rev.  1/99  19628434T 

CLARITIN  REDITABS  (loratadine  rapidly-disintegrating  tablets)  are  manufactured  for  Scher 

Corporation  by  Scherer  DDS,  England. 

U.S.  Patent  Nos.  4,282,233  and  4,371 ,516. 

Copyright  ©  1997, 1998,  Schering  Corporation.  All  rights  reserved. 


_F  A  TREE   FALLS   IN  THE   FOREST 

AND   NO   ONES  THERE  TO   HEAR  IT, 

DOES  IT  STILL  MAKE  A  SOUND? 

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can  help  stop  the  damage,  give  us  a  call.  And  raise  your  voice  with  ours.  This 


Sierra 
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Or  visit  our  website  at:  www.sierraclub.org 

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Some  say  he's  courageous. 

Crazy  for  trying  to  climb  Mount  Everest. 

Courageous  for  surviving  when 

things  went  wrong. 

To  me,  he  is  a  man  not  afraid  of  his  dreams 

A  man  determined  to  squeeze  every  last  bit 

of  enjoyment  out  of  life. 

A  man  I  call  Dad. 


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W\  I  Nw  LI/\   Do  something  importatA 


,  i  \  1 1  \  i  i  i >  i  k  i  >  m   paoi    94  began  to 
.tudy  Latin  in  the  fifth  grade  and 
-rench  in  the  seventh.  She  played  the 
>iano  and  the  cello.  In  high  school, 
it  the  Theodor-Heuss  Gymnasium, 
.he  took  a  double  major  in  biology 
md  chemistry,  passing  her  exams  with 
op  marks. 

In  press  accounts  after  her  murder, 
lovin  was  described  in  ways  that  made 
ler  seem  very  serious,  even  dull.  But 
;he  was  not  that  at  all.  "She  was  really 
ively,"  says  Rebecca  Jovin.  In  high 
school  she  sang  with  several  rock  bands. 
'She  was  full  of  exciting  contradictions," 
says  her  friend  David  Bach,  a  Yale  gradu- 
ite  who  is  from  Germany.  "She  was  ex 
tremely  serious  academical- 
ly, but  also  just  a  great  per- 
son to  have  fun  with  and 
hang  out  with  . . .  She  was 
very  traditional  and  stylish 
and  feminine,  but  then  also 
very  rebellious  and  liberal." 

It  was  always  assumed 
that  Jovin  would  go  to  col- 
lege in  the  United  States. 
Her  mother  had  gotten  her 
Ph.D.  from  Yale,  and  Ellen 
and  Diana  Jovin,  her  older 
half-sisters  from  her  father's 
first  marriage,  with  whom  she  was  close, 
graduated  from  Harvard.  Today,  Suzanne's 
grief-stricken  parents  say  they  deeply  re- 
gret having  encouraged  her  to  go  to  the 
university,  but  Suzanne  loved  Yale  from 
the  moment  she  arrived.  She  immediate- 
ly got  involved  in  volunteer  work— some- 
thing her  mother  had  done  when  she  was 
at  Yale,  and  had  urged  her  daughter  to 
do.  Although  she  started  out  intending 
to  major  in  one  of  the  sciences,  she 
switched  to  a  double  major  in  political 
science  and  international  studies,  friends 
say,  after  doing  poorly  in  an  advanced 
course  in  cell  biology.  "Suzanne  and  I 
both  decided  to  take  a  graduate-level  cell- 
bio  class  freshman  year,"  a  friend  remem- 
bers, laughing.  "We  were  both  from  Eu- 
rope and  thought  we  could  do  it. . . .  Cell 
bio,  that  was  the  only  time  I  saw  her  not 
confident." 

"I  think  Suzanne  held  herself  to  very 
high  standards  partly  because  her  parents 
were  both  these  brilliant  scientists,"  says 
another  friend.  At  the  time  of  her  death, 
Jovin  was  considering  a  career  in  the 
diplomatic  service  and  was  finishing  appli- 
cations to  graduate  schools  in  the  field— in- 
cluding, her  parents  say,  Tufts,  Columbia, 
and  Georgetown.  She  wasn't  interested  in 
making  money.  She  hadn't  been  raised 
that  way,  her  family  says.  "She  always 
came  down  to,  you  know,  helping  people 
and  being  influential  [as]  more  important," 
says  Bach. 


The  building  where 

Van  de  Velde's  office 

was  located  and 

where  Jovin  left  the 

last  draft  of  her 

senior  essay.  Below, 

Van  de  Velde, 


"You  know  the  old  TV  show  Happy 
Days!  Jim  is  Richie  Cunningham. 
Could  you  conceive  of  Richie  doing 
something  violent?" 


n  their  early  reports  of  Jovin's  mur- 
der, newspapers  and  television  stations 
used  the  same  photograph  of  her.  It 
made  Jovin  appear  fragile,  a  delicate  spar- 
row of  a  woman.  Her  friends  were  taken 
aback  by  the  picture.  "It  didn't  look  any- 
thing like  Suzanne  really  was,"  one  re- 
calls. To  begin  with,  friends  insist  that 
Jovin,  who  was  five  feet  five  inches  and 
weighed  125  pounds,  was  physically  quite 
strong.  She  jogged,  played  squash,  skied, 
and  sometimes  took  step-aerobics  classes 
at  Yale's  Payne  Whitney  gym.  Whoever 
killed  her,  her  friends  say,  was  very  strong 
or,  says  one,  "someone  who  knew  what 
they  were  doing."  Nor  was  Jovin  as  shy 
and  hesitant  as  the  photograph  made  her 
seem.  "'Strong-willed'  isn't  the  word," 
says  a  friend.  "If  you  were  talking  about 
things  Suzanne  knew  about,  she  would 
knock  you  out  if  she  disagreed."  "She  had 


very  strong  opinions,"  says  Rebecca 
Jovin.  "Sometimes  she  lacked  self- 
confidence,  but  overall  she  was  the 
strongest  person  I  ever  met." 

"She  was  so  not  a  victim,"  says  a 
friend.  Jovin,  says  another  friend, 
"had  a  very,  very  strong  sense  of  jus- 
tice and  righteousness. . . .  She 
could  just  be  furious  if  she 
thought  somebody  she  cared 
about  or  herself  was  treated  un- 
fairly. . . .  She  would  make  that 
clear,  that  she  wouldn't  put  up 
with  everything." 

"We  tried  to  encourage  self- 
confidence  in  our  daughters  to 
the  extent  of  recognizing  their 
worth  and  capabilities  and  of  ex- 
erting their  rights  while  avoiding 
arrogance.  We  encouraged  them 
to  never  feel  limited  by  their  sex," 
her  parents  say.  "We  were  very 
proud  of  Suzanne  and  admired  her 
greatly.  She  suffered  no  fools  and  could 
identify  them  with  ease. ...  It  pains  us 
terribly  to  imagine  that  she  may  have  met 
her  fate  as  a  victim  of  her  very  positive, 
but  critical,  outlook." 

nn  the  night  she  was  killed,  Jovin  spent 
the  early  part  of  the  evening  at  Trinity 
Lutheran  Church,  four  blocks  from  the 
campus,  at  a  pizza-making  part}'  she  had 
organized  for  Best  Buddies,  an  internation- 
al organization  that  pairs  students  with 
mentally  disabled  adults.  She  had  worked 
with  the  Yale  chapter  since  her  freshman 
year,  and  ran  it  by  the  time  she  was  a  se- 
nior. She  would  spend  hours  on  the  phone 
with  her  "buddy,"  Lee,  taking  him  to  Yale 
games  with  her  friends  and  arranging  out- 
ings and  social  events.  People  later  told  the 
police  that  Jovin  seemed  tired  that  eve- 
ning, but  that  she  appeared  to  be  in  a 


AUGUST     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


I IH; ' 


>  I  ho  l\\  League 


■  ..  ii  Hi   . IiukIi  >i  imetime 

hoi  she'd  helpi  d  ■  lean  up, 

.  i  borrowed  university  car  to 

i    oluntei  rs  home.  She  left  the 

■  1 1.. ik ini'  lot  and  then  walked  to 

rti  lent,  on  the  second  floor  of  a 

two-Story,   'Sale-owned   building  on   Park 

Street.  Sometime  between  8:30  and  8:50, 

a  group  of  friends  passed  by.  "We  waved 

to  her  and  said,     We're  going  to  the 

movies    do  you  want  to  come?'"  one  of 

them  remembers.  "She  was  at  her  window 

and  waved  back.  She  couldn't  come— she 

was  planning  to  work  on  her  senior  essay." 

At  9:02,  she  sent  an  E-mail  to  a  friend, 

telling  her  she  was  leaving  some  books  for 

her  in  her  apartment  lobby.  She  logged  off 

at  9: 10.  If  she  made  or  received  any  phone 

calls  from  within  Yale's  telephone  system, 

they  may  be  untraceable,  because  the 

phones  function  like  extensions  of  Yale's 

central-exchange  numbers. 

By  9:15,  Jovin  had  made  her  way  to 
Old  Campus,  where  she  ran  into  a  class- 
mate, Peter  Stein,  who  was  out  for  a  walk. 
She  told  him  she  was  going  to  the  Yale 
police  communications  center  at  Phelps 
Gate  to  turn  in  the  keys  to  the  university 
car.  "She  did  not  mention  plans  to  go 
anywhere  or  do  anything  else  afterward," 
Stein  later  told  the  Yale  Daily  News.  "She 
just  said  that  she  was  very,  very  tired  and 
that  she  was  looking  forward  to  getting  a 
lot  of  sleep."  "Stein  walked  off,  and  when 
he  turned  around,  Suzanne  was  gone," 
says  Blair  Golson,  who  covered  the  mur- 
der for  the  Yale  newspaper.  Suzanne  was 
seen  again,  between  9:25  and  9:30,  walk- 
ing north  on  College  Street.  If  she  was  go- 
ing home,  it  appeared  she  was  taking  a 
roundabout  way.  The  witness  who  says  she 
saw  her  close  to  9:30  was  a  student  who 
had  left  the  Yale-Princeton  hockey  game 
early  and  was  walking,  alone,  to  an  off- 
campus  party.  She  passed  Jovin,  but  didn't 
think  much  of  it  until  the  next  night,  when 
she  read  about  the  murder  in  the  Yale 
newspaper.  Nearly  hysterical,  she  called 
the  police  at  two  in  the  morning.  "They 
told  me  to  write  down  everything  I  saw, 
everything,"  she  recalls.  What  she  saw  was 
"a  Hispanic  or  black  guy  in  a  hooded 
sweatshirt"  going  north.  Behind  him,  also 
walking  north,  was  Jovin,  and  walking  in 
the  same  direction  several  paces  behind 
her  was,  she  says,  "a  blond  man  with 
glasses  ...  a  white  guy  dressed  nicely." 

Less  than  a  half-hour  after  this  witness 
saw  her,  Jovin  lay  dying  1.7  miles  away. 
According  to  the  police,  there  was  no  evi- 
dence of  a  sexual  assault.  The  viciousness 
of  the  stabbing  suggested  that  robbery  had 
not  been  her  murderer's  motive.  Police  be- 
lieved she  was  stabbed  from  behind  at  the 
spot  where  she  was  found.  It  appeared 
she  had  gotten  out  of  a  car,  before  or  after 


having  had  an  argument  with  a  man.  She 
did  not  appear  to  have  called  lor  help  or 
to  have  put  up  a  struggle.  "The  police  said 
she  didn't  scrape  her  hands.  They  didn't 
think  she  was  running  away,"  says  a  wom- 
an friend  whom  detectives  questioned. 

From  the  outset,  it  appeared  that  the 
police  believed  that  Jovin  was  murdered 
by  a  man,  one  whose  motive  was  proba- 
bly jealousy  or  desire  or  anger.  "Every 
guy  she  knew  was  interviewed  by  the 
cops,  the  cops  were  all  over  them,"  says 


"Men  had  a  better  rapport  with 
Dean  Van  de  Velde. ...  For  women 
it  was  more  difficult;  he  wasn't 
particularly  friendly." 


the  woman  friend.  "They  asked  if  they'd 
slept  with  her."  Her  mentoring  "buddy" 
was  briefly  a  suspect,  but  he  was  cleared 
by  the  police  almost  immediately,  as  was 
Roman  Caudillo,  her  boyfriend  since 
freshman  year,  who  took  a  leave  from 
Yale  after  the  murder.  "Roman  really 
loved  Suzanne,"  says  a  friend.  "His  family 
adored  her.  When  the  murder  happened, 
Roman's  parents  were  in  New  York  [from 
Texas]  before  Suzanne's  family  was  [able 
to  get  here]." 

In  the  months  since  Van  de  Velde  was 
linked  in  the  press  to  the  killing,  his 
friends— as  shocked  and  disbelieving  as 
Jovin's— have  rallied  around  him.  They 
have  written  letters  to  the  local  media  de- 
fending him,  they  have  sat  with  him  when 
he's  broken  down  crying  from  the  stress, 
afraid  to  go  out  in  public.  "You  walk  down 
the  street  and  get  the  feeling  everybody's 
looking  at  you  and  thinks  you're  a  mur- 
derer," says  Ira  Grudberg.  Van  de  Velde's 
friends  say  he  is  the  last  person  they  could 
imagine  breaking  the  law,  let  alone  killing 
someone.  "You  know  the  old  TV  show 
Happy  DaysT  asks  Ken  Spitzbard,  a  friend 
of  Van  de  Velde's  since  the  second  grade. 
"Jim  is  Richie  Cunningham.  Could  you 
conceive  of  Richie  Cunningham  doing 
something  violent  and  horrible?" 

Van  de  Velde  was  president  of  the  stu- 
dent council  at  Amity  Regional  High 
School,  in  the  wealthy  New  Haven  suburb 
of  Woodbridge.  He  was  captain  of  the 
soccer  team,  played  on  the  tennis  and 
baseball  teams,  and  was  a  member  of  the 
National  Honor  Society.  His  date  to  the 
senior  prom  was  the  most  beautiful  cheer- 
leader at  Amity.  His  pictures  in  the  high- 


school  yearbook  are  of  a  stereotypical 
American  golden  boy— big,  athletic,  some- 
what shy-looking.  The  second  of  James 
and  Lois  Van  de  Velde's  three  children, 
and  their  only  son,  Van  de  Velde  grew  up 
in  Orange,  Connecticut.  His  mother 
worked  as  an  administrative  assistant  at 
Yale,  and  his  father  in  the  media  business, 
for  the  local  ABC  affiliate  and  also  for 
Showtime.  A  driven  workaholic,  he  died 
of  lung  cancer  when  his  son  was  in  grad- 
uate school.  The  family  was  staunchly 
Roman  Catholic.  "Jim," 
says  a  friend,  "really  was 
an  altar  boy." 

Van  de  Velde  ma- 
jored in  political  sci- 
ence at  Yale.  He  sang 
in  the  university's  well- 
known  Russian  chorus 
his  freshman  year  and 
twice  traveled  to  Asia 
on  internships.  He  was 
a  serious  student  who 
graduated  with  honors. 
After  Yale,  Van  de  Velde  went  to  Boston 
to  Tufts'  Fletcher  School  of  Law  and  Di- 
plomacy, from  which,  in  1987,  he  re- 
ceived his  Ph.D.  in  international-security 
studies.  In  1988  he  was  selected  for  a 
prestigious  Presidential  Management  In- 
ternship and  was  assigned  to  work  at  the 
Pentagon  and  at  the  State  Department, 
where  he  stayed  for  four  years,  working 
on  U.S.-Soviet  disarmament  issues. 

In  1988,  Van  de  Velde  also  joined  the 
U.S.  Naval  Intelligence  Reserves,  in  which 
he  still  holds  the  rank  of  lieutenant  com- 
mander, with  a  "Top  Secret"  clearance. 
Trained  in  intelligence  work,  he  was  as- 
signed to  Singapore,  Brussels,  and  Pana- 
ma, where  he  analyzed  the  drug  trade 
out  of  Latin  America.  In  1993,  after  Bill 
Clinton  defeated  George  Bush,  Van  de 
Velde,  who  was  a  political  appointee  and 
a  Republican,  left  the  State  Department. 
That  fall  he  was  back  at  Yale  as  the  dean 
of  Saybrook  College. 

Jason  Criss,  a  1996  graduate,  remem- 
bers when  he  first  met  Van  de  Velde, 
the  week  that  all  the  freshmen  were 
moving  in.  "I  was  a  sophomore  and  Jim 
was  the  new  dean. . . .  The  first  couple 
days  he  looked  like  he  was  going  yacht- 
ing: blue  blazer,  white  starched  pants,  he 
wore  them  everywhere.  He  was  very  for- 
mal and  proper."  Like  almost  all  of  the 
former  Saybrook  students  interviewed  for 
this  story,  Criss  remembers  Van  de  Velde 
"as  in  some  ways  ...  the  model  dean." 

As  dean,  Van  de  Velde  was  supposed 
to  supervise  the  academic  affairs  of  Say- 
brook's  475  students,  and  by  all  accounts 
he  took  his  job  very  seriously.  He  ate  meals 
in  the  dining  hall  and  knew  all  the  students 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


•-  s 


foai  i  I  lie  l\\  League 


From  top:  Suzanne  Jovin,  right, 

with  her  sister,  Rebecca,  1982;  with  her 

father,  Thomas  Jovin,  a  molecular 

and  cell  biologist,  on  the  Place  des  Vosges, 

Paris,  1998;  Thomas,  with  daughters 

Rebecca,  left,  and  Ellen,  second  from  left 

(partially  obscured),  accepting  an  Elm  and 

Ivy  Award  on  behalf  of  Suzanne,  Yale 

University,  May  6,  1999. 


by  name.  He  attended  their 
student-council  meetings,  gave 
them  dean's  excuses  when 
they  were  ill,  and  tried  to  help 
them  out  when  they  were  in 
trouble.  "He  actually  got  involved,"  recalls 
one  woman.  "We  had  rats  in  our  room,  and 
he  did  something  about  it."  During  study 
breaks,  he  would  invite  students  to  his 
apartment.  "He  was  a  terrific  cook,"  Criss 
recalls.  "He'd  cook  us  sesame  noodles  and 
Asian  dumplings." 

"He  had  this  aura  about  him  because 
we'd  heard  that  he  worked  for  the  C.I.A.," 
another  woman  recalls.  "He  said  he'd 
studied  handwriting  analysis,  and  he 
would  do  it  for  us  in  the  dining  hall,"  says 
another.  Michael  Ranis,  who  went  to  high 
school  and  to  Yale  with  Van  de  Velde, 
says  that  his  friend  really  enjoyed  being  a 
dean.  "He  liked  the  students  a  lot,  the 
idea  of  being  there  for  them,"  Ranis  says. 
"He  was  shy  and  awkward  socially,  but  he 
really  tried.  He  wanted  to  do  everything 
right,"  says  one  woman. 

But  some  saw  Van  de  Velde  as  too 
tightly  wound.  He  was  always  formal 
and  rarely  used  contractions  in  his 
speech.  "He  was  no-nonsense;  he  wasn't 
really  personable,"  says  another  former 
student.  "Freshman  year  everyone  called 
him  Dean  Anal.  He  was  by  the  book, 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


he  didn't  make  any  exceptions." 
Van  de  Velde,  who  Spitzbard  says  has 
never  taken  illegal  drugs  and  rarely 
drinks,  got  the  reputation  for  being  ex- 
tremely strict  on  the  issue  of  alcohol  and 
drug  use  at  Saybrook.  "Dean  Van  de 
Velde  was  the  biggest  straight  arrow  at 
Yale,  more  straight-arrow  than  any 
dean,"  says  Jason  Karlinsky,  who  gradu- 
ated in  1997. 

Students  say  that  by  1995  Van  de  Velde 
seemed  tired  of  the  job.  "I  knew  he  was 
going  to  resign  two  years  before  he  did," 
says  one  woman  who  was  friendly  with 
him  when  she  was  at  Saybrook.  "He  nev- 
er liked  being  dean.  He  didn't  know  what 
he  really  wanted.  I  think  he  wanted  some- 
thing in  Washington."  As  the  years  went 
by,  he  appeared  to  some  students  to  be- 
come more  aloof.  "He  gave  the  impres- 
sion of  being  sort  of  really  inaccessible," 
says  a  woman  who  graduated  from  Say- 
brook this  year.  "Men  had  a  better  rap- 
port with  him  because  he  played  on 
some  intramural  teams.  For  women  it 
was  more  difficult;  he  wasn't  particularly 
friendly." 


I  Iter  the  slaying,  the  police  asked  stu- 

II  dents  if  Van  de  Velde  had  ever  had  an 
/ 1  affair  with  a  student.  Whether  they  liked 
him  or  not,  all  the  Saybrook  students  in- 
terviewed for  this  story  say  that  there  was 
never  a  hint  of  anything  untoward.  "There 
were  no  rumors  of  him  having  problems 
with  women  or  relationships  with  students," 
says  Criss.  Only  after  she  graduated  several 
years  ago,  says  one  woman,  did  Van  de 
Velde  even  mention  women  to  her.  As  she 
told  the  police  when  they  tracked  her  down 
in  December  after  finding  her  number  in 
his  phone  records,  "He  said  that  it  was 
odd  being  a  young  guy  as  dean,  seeing  all 
these  freshmen  who  are  so  beautiful  and 
that  it's  hard  not  to  notice,"  the  woman  re- 
calls. "They  wanted  to  know  if  I'd  had  an 
affair  with  him,"  the  woman  recalls.  "I  told 
them  I  had  not." 

Van  de  Velde  took  a  leave  of  absence 
from  the  dean's  job,  early  in  1997,  to  go  to 
Italy  on  assignment  for  naval  intelligence. 
He  came  back  that  April  to  complete  the 
semester,  and  then  left  Yale  to  go 
to  Stanford's  Asia-Pacific  Research 
Center  as  its  executive  director.  In 
May  1998,  nine  months  into  a  five- 
year  contract,  he  resigned  and  re-  | 
!     turned  to  New  Haven.  Van  de  Velde, 
a  friend  says,  had  been  miserable  in 
California.  "There  were  older  profes- 
sors who  came  [to  work]  in  shorts. 
Jim  wears  suits  and  ties  every  day," 
she  says.  "It  did  not  click  with  any- 
one. He  didn't  have  a  social  life.  He 
wasn't  happy." 

Nevertheless,  Van  de  Velde  was  up- 
set at  having  to  leave.  "He's  an  over- 
achiever,"  says  this  friend,  "and  basi- 
cally he'd  been  let  go."  It  was  Van  de 
Velde's  "first  real  setback,"  says  Ranis. 
"Most  of  us  go  through  a  lot  of  them  by 
the  time  we  reach  38;  Jim  hadn't."  Van 
de  Velde  became  depressed,  friends  say, 
to  the  point  where  he  began  seeing  a 
therapist  and  was  briefly  put  on  an  anti- 
depressant. 

During  the  summer  he  got  back  in 
touch  with  a  woman  he  had  dated  before 
he  went  to  California.  Exactly  what  went 
wrong  is  not  clear,  but  the  results  were  di- 
sastrous. It  appears  that  at  some  point 
during  the  fall  of  last  year  the  woman,  a 
local  television  reporter,  went  to  the  police 
and  complained  that  she  was  being  ha- 
rassed by  Van  de  Velde.  "Supposedly  she 
claimed  that  he  was  looking  in  her  win- 
dow, that  he  was  stalking  her  somehow," 
says  Ira  Grudberg.  The  police  have  not 
confirmed  the  existence  of  this  complaint, 
but  after  Jovin  was  killed  the  local  press 
reported  that  apparently  two  women  who 
worked  for  local  television  stations  had 
spoken  to  the  police  about  their  relation- 
ships with  Van  de  Velde.  The  other  worn- 


foally,  lens  wearers  have  a  solution 
for  end-of-day  dryness. 


Only  COMPLETE®  protects  your  eyes 
all  day  with  a  cushion  of  moisture. 

All  lens  solutions  clean  your  contact  lenses. 
But  only  COMPLETE®  Brand  Multi-Purpose 
Solution  helps  keep  your  eyes  moist  and 
protected  all  day  Ions.  That's  because  of  our  exclusive 
COMPLETE  Pro-Tec™ System,  a  unique  combination 
of  insredients  that  cleans,  disinfects  and  surrounds 
your  lenses  with  a  cushion  of  moisture. 

So  your  eyes  stay  protected  from  dryness  and 
irritation  throushout  the  day. 

If  it  doesn't  protect  your  eyes, 
it  isn't  COMPLETE? 

Doctor-recommended  for  all  soft  contact  lenses 


.-  friend  ol  the  first.  He 

,i   /...in. hi  flow<  i  i  anony- 
iraed  Ins  identity  from  the 
Bred  that  he  was  in- 
i\  h  Ik  i  Friend. 

ave  asked  both  the  police  and 
l  thi  state's  attorney's  office,  'If 
there  is  a  complaint,  give  us  the  date,'" 
says  Grudberg.  "Maybe  he  was  out  of  the 
state.  We  don't  know.  One  of  the  cops 
claims  that  he  spoke  with  Jim  and  told 
him  to  keep  away,  but  Jim  says  that  never 
happened. . . .  Jim  was  never  arrested.  He 
was  never  questioned."  Van  de  Velde  "flat 
out  denies"  that  he  stalked  his  former  girl- 
friend, says  Grudberg,  but  the  attorney 
also  believes  that  whatever  this  woman 
told  the  police  has  become  a  central  ele- 
ment in  their  suspicions  about  Van  de 
Velde.  "I  think  they  are  convinced  that  he 
is  a  weird  guy,"  he  says. 

"I  think  she  understandably  got  upset," 
says  a  friend  of  Van  de  Velde's,  who  be- 
lieves he  really  cared  about  this  woman. 
"He  would  phone  her,  run  into  her  on  the 
street.  He  wasn't  taking  'no'  for  an  answer." 
(David  Grudberg,  Ira's  son  and  law  partner, 
who  went  to  high  school  and  college  with 
Van  de  Velde,  objects  to  this  account.  Van 
de  Velde,  he  says,  only  ran  into  this  woman, 
and  phoned  her  once.  Grudberg  denies 
that  Van  de  Velde  was  pursuing  her.)  "The 
thing  with  Jim  is  this  circumstantial  evi- 
dence coinciding  with  his  personal  life," 
says  the  friend.  "Here  he  is,  not  letting  go 
of  a  woman,  and  then  people  wonder: 
Was  it  the  same  with  Suzanne?" 

Jovin  was  accepted  into  Van  de  Velde's 
seminar  Strategy  and  Policy  in  the 
Conduct  of  War,  in  September  1998. 
She  was  among  the  169  students  who  had 
applied  for  the  40  places 
in  that  course  and  Van  de 
Velde's  other  seminar,  The 
Art  of  Diplomacy.  During 
his  time  as  dean  of  Say- 
brook,  Van  de  Velde  had 
also  taught  in  the  political- 
science  department,  and 
he  developed  a  reputation 
as  one  of  the  best  lecturers 
at  Yale.  His  teaching  style 
was  riveting  and  creative.  To  demonstrate 
how  force  changes  the  balance  of  power 
in  international  relations,  he  once  pulled 
out  a  fake  handgun  in  the  middle  of  a  class 
simulated  negotiation.  He  organized  "dip- 
lomatic receptions"  for  his  students  and 
gave  each  of  them  the  assignment  of  an- 
swering a  question  about  someone  else  in 
their  class  without  letting  that  person  real- 
ize that  he  or  she  was  being  pumped  for 
information.  He  took  them  on  field  trips, 
including  one  to  a  nearby  naval  base  to 
tour  a  nuclear  submarine,  and,  says  one 


l\\  League 


student,  "we  got  to  touch  a  cruise  missile ." 
Jovin,  friends  say,  began  the  semester 
like  many  students,  enthralled  with  Van 
de  Velde.  Indeed,  she  was  impressed 
enough  that  she  decided  to  do  her  senior 
essay  with  him  as  her  adviser— actually, 
she  had  taken  the  unusual  step  of  writing 
two  senior  essays,  the  other  in  interna- 
tional studies.  She  chose  a  subject  in  Van 
de  Velde's  area  of  expertise:  the  interna- 
tional terrorist  Osama  bin  Laden,  who  is 
believed  to  have  masterminded  the  bomb- 
ing of  the  American  Embassies  in  Kenya 
and  Tanzania.  Van  de  Velde  appeared 
equally  taken  with  Jovin.  "I  think  he 
liked  Suzanne's  enthusiasm.  It  was  flat- 
tering that  a  student  would  be  so  deeply 
involved  in  his  topic,"  says  a  student  who 
was  in  the  class. 

At  some  point  in  the  semester,  however, 
Jovin's  enthusiasm  seemed  to  falter.  She 
didn't  go  on  either  of  the  two  field  trips. 
"She  thought  they  were  a  waste  of  her 
time,"  says  a  friend  of  hers.  She  also  had 
reservations  about  a  project  on  terrorism. 
The  project,  which  was  optional  but 
which  the  class  had  voted  to  pursue,  in- 
volved using  the  Internet  to  show  how 
easy  it  would  be  for  a  terrorist  to  get  infor- 
mation to  create  a  weapon  of  mass  de- 
struction. "We  decided  to  plan  to  use 
chemicals  in  a  plane  that  we'd  fly  over  the 
Super  Bowl  in  Miami,"  says  one  student. 
"We  figured  everything  out  except  how 
much  water  to  put  in  the  chemical  to 
make  it  fall  from  the  plane— no  one  would 
give  us  the  proportions  for  that."  Accord- 
ing to  Jovin's  parents,  the  chemical  in 
question  was  the  warfare  agent  sarin. 
"Suzanne  expressed  to  a  fellow  student 
that  we,  her  parents,  might  have  that  in- 
formation," the  Jovins  say,  "but  that  we 


"I  got  chills.  I  didn't  know 
Van  de  Velde.  I  go  home  and  turn 
on  the  news  and  I  see  him" 


would  be  opposed  to  the  project  on  moral 
and  ethical  grounds  and  that  she  therefore 
would  not  proceed  further."  Faced  with 
students'  objections,  Van  de  Velde  stopped 
the  project.  He  does  not  recall  any  com- 
plaints from  Jovin. 

The  initial  speculation  by  the  police  was 
that  Van  de  Velde  and  Jovin  were  having 
an  affair  that  went  horribly  wrong.  Al- 
though they  pursued  that  theory  aggres- 
sively in  the  first  weeks  after  the  murder, 
they  seem  to  have  found  no  evidence  of  a 
romantic  relationship.  Jovin  was  happy 


with  Roman  (  'audillo,  her  friends  and  par- 
ents say,  insisting  that  she  never  so  much 
as  hinted  to  anyone  that  she  was  involved 
with  Van  de  Velde.  For  his  part,  Van  de 
Velde  seemed  to  be  in  search  of  a  relation- 
ship, not  in  the  throes  of  one.  "He  really 
wanted  to  meet  someone,"  says  a  friend. 

f  the  police  found  no  evidence  of  a  ro- 
mance, they  did,  however,  learn  some- 
thing else.  By  November,  it  appears,  the 
professional  relationship  between  Van  de 
Velde  and  Jovin  had  broken  down  almost 
completely.  Although  Van  de  Velde  had 
written  her  a  glowing  recommendation  for 
graduate  school  in  late  October,  Jovin  be- 
gan to  feel  that  he  had  no  time  for  her. 
According  to  a  friend  of  Jovin's,  she  had 
tried  repeatedly  to  meet  with  Van  de  Velde 
about  her  senior  essay  and  had  felt  that 
she  was  rebuffed.  In  the  weeks  before  she 
died,  says  this  friend,  "she  complained 
bitterly  about  a  bunch  of  things  in  that 
class,  and  especially  his  lack  of  support 
for  her  project.  He  had  shown  no  interest 
in  her  work."  For  a  college-thesis  adviser 
basically  to  check  out  on  a  student  trying 
to  get  feedback  on  her  senior  essay  would 
be  unusual  in  any  case.  But  for  Van  de 
Velde— a  devoted  teacher  noted  for  his 
availability,  who  would  take  his  students 
to  lunch  to  help  them  with  their  work, 
and  who  answered  their  E-mails  within 
minutes— it  would  have  been  downright 
bizarre.  During  November,  it  appears  that 
Jovin  was  trying  to  pin  down  a  time  to 
meet  with  Van  de  Velde.  "They  never  did 
get  together  [then],"  says  Ira  Grudberg. 
"They  couldn't  get  the  dates  right  and  so 
forth."  According  to  David  Grudberg, 
Van  de  Velde  was  unaware  that  Jovin  was 
concerned.  "He  invited  all  his  students  to 
meet  with  him,  especially  those  writing 
senior  essays  under  his  direction,"  he  says. 
"If  she  had  complaints  about  the  way  he 
was  advising  her  on  her  thesis,  she  never 
expressed  them  to  him." 

By  Thanksgiving,  Jovin  had  become 
upset;  her  essay  was  due  on  December  8. 
"Suzanne  indicated  to  us  during  the 
Thanksgiving  break— we  were  together  in 
California— how  deeply  she  resented  the 
lack  of  mentoring  by  this  senior  thesis  ad- 
visor," her  parents  recall.  Although  Van 
de  Velde  denies  having  received  it,  Jovin's 
parents  say  she  had  handed  in  a  draft  on 
November  17.  She  left  a  second  draft  with 
Van  de  Velde  right  before  the  Thanksgiv- 
ing holiday.  Jovin  told  friends  that  Van  de 
Velde  canceled  a  meeting  on  Monday, 
November  30,  because  he  hadn't  read  the 
paper  yet,  although  he  says  no  meeting 
was  scheduled.  At  a  meeting  the  next  day, 
December  1,  he  still  hadn't  read  it.  "He'd 
gotten  tied  up  over  Thanksgiving  and 
hadn't  done  it,"  says  Ira  Grudberg.  "He 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


Country 

Country  M/migS 

/nn©«v «, 


cherrjes 


—    'X 


*► 


vw.countryinnspecialties.co 


o  someplace  nice  lor  breakfast; 


.<*> 

i 

'*-■•   r-f.,' ■■...■       ■ 


!  i 


Look  what  fell  out  of  the  family  tree. 


LINCOLN  LS 


LINCOLN.  AMERICAN  LUXURY. 


IIhmva  League 


_XdSC9MTX9MBHiHii 

:tii      ad  he  could  Bee 

l  ■'     ad  night 

i  u  ni  it  and  met 

i  i  (>n  December  -,  at  which 

e(    ii  with  her    She  was 

p] 

I  ccording  to  her  parents  and  a  close 

II  friend,  however,  Jovin  was  far  from  hap- 
/ 1  py  aftet  that  meeting.  "The  last  time  I 
talked  to  Suzanne  was  ...  on  that  evening, 
very  late  in  the  evening,"  the  friend  says. 
"She  was  still  furious  . . .  and  she  was  very 
insecure  about  what  would  happen." 

Jovin  was  concerned,  her  parents  say, 
that  the  second  reader  of  her  essay  would 
not  be  happy  with  it.  Her  parents  say  she 
spoke  to  a  member  of  the  Yale  administra- 
tion about  the  problem  "in  a  highly  emo- 
tional, tearful  session,"  but  did  not  make  a 
formal  complaint.  "She  thought  she  could 
handle  the  situation,"  her  parents  say.  "I 
tried  to  calm  her  down  on  Wednesday 


lice  to  e-mail  nie  over  the  weekend  if  you 
have  questions  or  run  into  any  major  prob- 
lems," she  wrote,  and  signed  it  "Suzanne." 
Van  de  Velde  spent  most  of  the  evening 
of  Friday,  December  4,  at  his  office,  Ira 
Grudberg  says.  A  friend,  who  stopped  by 
around  six  p.m.  to  ask  him  to  go  to  a 
movie,  says  he  was  planning  to  work  all 
evening.  According  to  Grudberg,  Van  de 
Velde  went  over  Jovin's  revisions  that  eve- 
ning and  was  going  to  give  her  his  corn- 


evening,"  says  the  same 

friend.  "She  was  still  upset Furious  is 

how  she  was.  That's  the  way  to  describe 
how  she  was  in  those  last  couple  of  days 
with  him." 

Sometime  on  the  afternoon  of  Decem- 
ber 4— Van  de  Velde  believes  it  was  either 
between  4  and  4:30,  or  around  1— Jovin 
stopped  by  Van  de  Velde's  office  on  Pros- 
pect Street  to  drop  off  a  new  draft.  She 
attached  a  cordial,  handwritten  note  out- 
lining her  changes  and  thanking  him.  "Feel 


ments  the  following  morning.  He 
took  a  short  break  at  one  point  and  walked 
up  the  street  to  Ingalls  Rink,  to  watch  part 
of  the  hockey  game,  then  returned  to  his 
office,  and  then  went  home,  which  is 
where  he  was,  alone,  says  Grudberg,  at 
the  time  of  the  killing. 

Krudberg  says  that  he  and  his  son  David 
have  spent  the  past  seven  months  try- 
ing to  understand  why  the  police  con- 
sider Van  de  Velde  their  chief  suspect.  As 
much  as  they  have  been  able  to,  they  have 


followed  the  police's  tracks,  swooping  in 
behind  them  to  interview  people  who  were 
questioned,  hoping  to  get  some  insight 
into  what  the  police  believe  to  be  the  case 
against  their  client.  "There  was  a  witness 
who  saw  a  car  hightailing  out  from  that 
area  who  spoke  with  the  police,"  says  Ira 
Grudberg.  "He  described  it  as  a  small  red 
car,  and  [the  police]  asked  him  14  times  if 

it  was  a  big,  red  Wrangler And  they 

showed  him  pictures  of  Jim,  and  he  said 
that's  absolutely  not  who  was 
driving  the  car."  Grudberg 
says  he's  stumped.  "Among 
other  things,  talking  about  a 
motive.  Word  got  back  to  us 
supposedly  from  some  peo- 
ple that  [talked  to  the  police] 
that  Suzanne  was  going  to 
make  a  complaint  about  the 
way  he  was  handling  her  pa- 
per and  therefore  he  killed 
her,"  says  Grudberg.  "It's 
just  kind  of  strange.  If,  for 
some  reason,  she  climbs  in  a 
car  with  him  downtown,  why  drive  a  half- 
mile  past  his  house  and  kill  her  on  a  cor- 
ner? It  doesn't  make  sense." 

The  police,  says  Ira  Grudberg,  first 
questioned  Van  de  Velde  on  the  Monday 
after  the  slaying.  The  session  was  brief, 
he  says,  and  there  was  no  suggestion  that 
Van  de  Velde  was  a  suspect.  For  some 
reason,  however,  by  the  next  night  the  po- 
lice appeared  to  have  become  persuaded 
that  Van  de  Velde  was  guilty.  They  inter- 
rogated him  for  four  hours,  "accusing 
him  of  the  murder,"  says  Grudberg. 
Choosing  not  to  call  a  lawyer,  Van  de 
Velde  offered  them  the  keys  to  his  car— 
which  they  searched— and  his  apart- 
ment, and  also  offered  to  let  them  do 
blood  and  polygraph  tests  on  him. 
Grudberg  says  that  the  police  did  not 
perform  these  tests,  and  although  the 
police  had  told  the  New  Haven  Regis- 
ter that  they  had  searched  the  apart- 
ment, Grudberg  says  they  did  not. 
The  next  day,  Van  de  Velde  showed 
up  in  the  Grudbergs'  office.  He  did 
not  speak  to  the  police  again. 

"I  think  that  everything  Jim  did 
that  weekend,"  says  Michael  Ranis,  "the 
police  think  is  suspicious— that  he  put 
himself  out  there,  that  he  was  exposed." 
Whatever  he  may  have  felt  about  Jovin 
before  her  death,  Van  de  Velde  seemed 
stricken  by  it.  He  showed  up  at  Daven- 
port College  on  Saturday,  December  5, 
when  Yale's  president,  its  dean,  the  chap- 
lains, the  psychiatrist,  and  the  chief  of 
its  police  force  met  with  Jovin's  college- 
mates  to  discuss  the  killing.  That  weekend 
he  also  appeared  on  the  local  television 
news  being  interviewed  about  what  an 
extraordinary  person  Jovin  had  been.  On 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1999 


ALBERT  BROOKS  SHARON  STONE 
ANDIE  MACDOWELL  ud  JEFF  BRIDGES 


In  Goddess  We  Trust. 


An  inspired  Jr  new  comedy. 


IlllllllflSSIilllllli 


J 


■■■ 


: 


If 


M 


I'! 


13  PMBfTS  STBONfiUf  CAUTIONf  0  CS 
btertll  Mar  fa  Unppreprtm  tot  CMUraii  IMcm 


0    I    0    I    T    *    L 


'  lllll'll' 


lIVHil 


SOUNDTRACK  AVAIUBli  ON 

rocket 


If  11 


in 


ii  id 


OCTOBER 


In  Theatres  Nationwide  August  27th 

www.themusemovie.com 


fes  you  can 
actually  tOUCh. 


Lcller  Irom  Ine  l\\  League 


Monday  morning  be  showed  up  in  class  with  "red  and  pulfy 
eyes,"  one  sludent  remembers,  and  placed  a  bouquet  of  three 
do/en  white  carnations  at  lovin's  seat.  That  day,  Van  de  Velde 
spoke  to  the  New  Haven  Register,  in  which  he  said  again  how 
wonderful  Jovin  was. 

Ranis  says  that  Van  de  Velde  went  on  television  only  because 
the  station  called  him.  He  had  been  working  on  a  masters 
degree  in  broadcast  journalism  at  nearby  Quinnipiac  College 
and  had  had  an  internship  at  the  station.  "Where  I  come  out  on 
this  is:  How  can  being  straight  make  you  a  suspect?"  Ranis  says. 
"The  police  probably  aren't  used  to  having  someone  sit  there  for 
four  hours  answering  questions  without  a  lawyer.  That  is  unusu- 
al. But  that's  how  Jim  is.  He's  so  honest." 

On  the  morning  of  December  9,  the  New  Haven  Register  ran 
a  banner  headline:  yale  teacher  grilled  in  killing.  The 
story  did  not  name  Van  de  Velde,  but  its  details  were  so  specific 
that  many  people  knew  it  was  about  him.  On  his  way  to  the 
dentist  that  morning,  Van  de  Velde  was  waylaid  by  local  televi- 
sion reporters.  "They  put  a  microphone  in  front  of  him  on  the 
street  and  said,  basically,  'Did  you  see  the  Register  this  morn- 
ing? They  did  everything  but  name  you.'  And  Jim  said  it  sure 
seemed  that  way,  but  'I'm  innocent,'"  Ranis  says.  The  fallout 
from  that  interview  was  damaging  for  Van  de  Velde.  Many  peo- 
ple who  saw  the  news  that  night  say  it  made  him  look  guilty.  He 
seemed  tired  and  looked  down  at  the  ground  when  he  spoke. 
His  words— "I  never  hurt  her"— struck  people  as  odd.  There 
was,  and  still  is,  much  discussion  of  whether  the  press  at  that 
moment,  without  breaking  any  rules,  nevertheless  went  too  far, 
crossing  the  line  of  fairness. 

But  what  the  police  do  know  is  that  one  person  who  watched 
the  news  that  night  phoned  them,  stunned  at  what  she  saw.  The 
woman  who  had  seen  Jovin  walking  on  College  Street  at  around 
9:25  on  the  night  of  the  stabbing  saw  Van  de  Velde  on  television 
and  started  shaking.  "I  got  chills,"  she  says.  "I  didn't  know  Van 
de  Velde.  I  go  home  and  turn  on  the  news  and  I  see  him.  This 
guy,  talking  to  reporters,  he  was  blond,  with  glasses.  I  could  not 
believe  what  I  saw.  I  went  back  to  my  notes  and  saw  the  descrip- 
tion I  wrote,  that  I  saw  a  blond  man  with  glasses."  The  man  she 
claims  she  saw  walking  behind  Jovin  near  Phelps  Gate  the  night 
of  the  murder  so  closely  resembled  Van  de  Velde's  image  on  tele- 
vision that  she  believes  it  was  he. 

If  this  is  a  crucial  element  of  the  police  case  against  Van  de 
Velde— a  tentative  identification  that  could  be  highly  biased  by 
the  television-news  context  in  which  it  was  made— it  is  obviously 
not  enough  for  an  arrest.  In  response  to  the  claims  of  this  wit- 
ness, David  Grudberg  says  flatly,  "It  was  not  Jim." 

1 1  miss  everything  about  Suzanne,"  says  Rebecca  Jovin,  who  was 
in  the  middle  of  her  freshman  year  at  college  when  her  sister 
was  killed.  "When  she  left  for  college  ...  I  cried  for  weeks  on 
end.  I  feel  the  same  way  now,  but  now  I  know  the  separation  is 
permanent,"  she  says.  "I  often  think  about  the  way  in  which 
Suzanne  died  and  the  questions  that  will  never  be  answered,  and 
that  really  traumatizes  me.  I  cannot  deal  with  that  at  all,  I  just 
have  to  let  it  pass  when  it  comes  to  my  mind." 

Suzanne  Jovin's  family  has  said  little  publicly  about  the  in- 
vestigation into  her  death.  Indeed,  her  parents  spoke  to  Vanity 
Fair  with  deep  reluctance  and  then  only  to  clarify  aspects  of 
their  daughter's  life  that  they  thought  were  important  to  under- 
stand. "For  us,  there  remains  a  void  in  our  life  that  can  never 
be  filled,"  Thomas  and  Donna  Jovin  say.  The  Jovins  have  not 
mentioned  Van  de  Velde's  name  in  public,  but  an  anguished  let- 
ter from  Donna  Jovin  that  was  published  in  Connecticut  news- 
papers on  April  14  seemed  to  many  to  be  directed  at  Van  de 
Velde's  mother.  "I  personally  appeal  in  this  open  letter  to  the 

AUGUST     1999 


mother  of  [Suzanne's]  killer,  assuming  that  she  resides  in  the 
greater  New  Haven  area,"  she  wrote.  "As  a  moral  and  rational 
human  being  you  will  not  be  able  to  live  with  yourself  if  you 
withhold  knowledge  or  suspicion  of  your  son's  complicity. 
Come  forward  to  the  police,  talk  to  them.  Demand  that  your 
son  tell  the  truth." 

Lois  Van  de  Velde,  says  a  friend,  saw  the  letter,  but  "she  didn't 
read  the  whole  thing.  She  is  trying  to  keep  on  with  her  life.  This 
has  been  awful  for  her." 

Ever  since  Yale  canceled  Van  de  Velde's  courses  for  the  spring 
term  last  January— claiming  that  it  would  be  a  distraction  to  stu- 
dents to  have  a  murder  suspect  in  the  classroom— he  has  had  lit- 
tle to  do  other  than  focus  on  the  horror  of  being  the  chief  sus- 
pect in  a  savage  killing  he  insists  he  didn't  commit.  His  friends, 
who  believe  he  is  innocent,  say  that  Van  de  Velde  is  beyond  des- 
perate. "At  this  point,  Jim  has  got  to  be  formally  absolved,  or 
else  his  life  will  forever  be  under  this  cloud,"  say  Ken  Spitzbard. 
Says  James  Thomas,  dean  of  admissions  at  Yale  Law  School, 
"This  guy  has  been  ruined.  Suppose  it  turns  out  some  vagabond 
did  it?  Jim  can  never  get  back  what  he  lost." 

"To  get  a  search  warrant  or  an  arrest  warrant  an  officer  must 
present  relevant  facts  under  oath  before  a  judge.  That  has  not 
been  done,"  says  David  Grudberg.  "To  brand  someone  'a  sus- 
pect' all  you  have  to  do  is  pick  up  the  phone  and  call  the  local 
newspaper.  There  is  something  very  wrong  with  that  when  the 
potential  consequence  is  the  destruction  of  someone's  life." 

"I  know  how  hard  you  have  worked  on  the  story  about 
Suzanne.  You  have  no  idea  how  much  I  wish  I  could  speak  with 
you,"  Van  de  Velde  wrote  me  in  an  E-mail  in  late  May.  "My  best 
wishes  for  your  success.  We  very  much  hope  that  your  story  will 
advance  the  investigation  and  ultimately  help  bring  peace  to 
Suzanne's  parents,  the  Yale  community,  my  family  and  all  those 
horrified  at  Suzanne's  tragic  death." 

By  graduation  day,  May  24,  the  police  posters  of  Jovin  that 
had  been  tacked  to  the  trees  of  Old  Campus  had  long  since 
been  torn  by  the  wind  or  ripped  down.  All  of  the  pride  and 
pomp  and  glory  of  Yale's  298-year  history  was  on  display  that 
day  as  the  1,361  members  of  Jovin's  class  paraded  in  their  black 
caps  and  gowns  across  the  New  Haven  Green  through  Phelps 
Gate  and  into  Old  Campus.  Looking  exhausted  and  somewhat 
hung  over,  they  stopped  and  posed  for  their  proud  parents,  who 
were  standing  with  cameras  on  the  sidelines.  As  degrees  were 
conferred,  a  loud  roar  filled  the  Old  Campus  courtyard  as  Jovin's 
classmates  rose  from  their  seats  and  cheered. 

Suzanne  Jovin  was  on  many  people's  minds  that  day.  In  the 
smaller  ceremony  at  Davenport  after  the  main  commencement, 
Yale  conferred  a  degree  on  Jovin.  She  graduated  cum  laude  with 
distinction  in  both  her  majors.  Her  classmates  had  placed  a  slab 
of  black  stone  as  a  memorial  to  her  in  Davenport's  smaller 
courtyard.  Nestled  in  a  flower  bed  under  a  linden  and  a  dog- 
wood, it  reads: 

Suzanne  N.  Jovin 

In  Loving  Memory 

January  26,  1977-December  4,  1998 

The  candle  that  students  had  placed  on  the  stone  had  been 
extinguished  by  the  rain  that  poured  down  on  graduation  day,  a 
torrent  that  also  drenched  the  bouquets  of  flowers  and  a  lone 
rose.  Still,  says  a  friend,  "it  was  as  though  Suzanne  was  there." 
In  the  months  since  the  murder,  says  one  woman  who  graduated 
that  day,  "a  lot  of  us  would  wake  up  in  the  morning  saying.  To- 
day maybe  we'll  find  out  that  so-and-so  killed  Suzanne.  And 
then  we  realized  that  we  might  not  know  before  we  leave  Yale. 
Now  we  might  never  know."  □ 


Fujifilm's  new  award-winning  2.3  Megapixel  MX-2700  digital 
camera  produces  the  ultimate  in  sharp,  high-resolution  color 
pictures.  A  tull  lineup  of  easy-to-use  cameras  makes  it  simple  to 
print  real  pictures  at  home  with  the  Fujifilm  IMX-70  or  your  current 
printer.  Take  your  pictures  to  your  photo  processor  or  upload  them 
to  Fujifilm.net  so  your  friends  and  family  can  enjoy  them  anywhere 
in  the  world.  The  digital  age  promised  to  make  things  easier. 
Finally,  it  does.  For  more  information  call  1-800-800-FUJI. 

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digital 

You  can  see  the  future  from  here. 


AUGUST     1999 


GUCCI 


Name:  Daniel  Lapaine.  Age:  28.  Provenance:  Sydney,  Australia. 
Fleetingly  seen  in:  The  1994  Australian  hit  Muriel's  Wedding 
and  Polish  Wedding,  co-starring  Claire  Danes  and  Gabriel  Byrne. 
Now  arriving  in:  Brokedown  Palace,  co-starring  Danes  and  Kate 
Beckinsale,  and  Elephant  Juice,  a  romantic  comedy  starring 
Emmanuelle  Bean .  Why,  in  the  future,  the  role  of  good-natured  doormat 
might  appeal  to  Lapaine:  "I  have  played  quite  a  few  roles  where  I 
seem  charming  and  nice  but  I'm  actually  not.  I  worry  if  people  see 
something  going  on  here.  I'm  actually  a  very  nice  person." 
How  he  and  some  fellow  Aussies  have  brought  an  end  to  the  era  of  Paul  Hogan 
and  Yahoo  Serious:  "I  went  to  see  Elizabeth,  and  to  see  Cate  Blanchett 
and  Geoffrey  Rush  up  there  carrying  this  very  British  film  . . .  It's 
funny,  after  being  a  colony  for  200  years,  things  have  really 
opened  up  for  Australian  actors.  Which  is  good,  because  there 
is  a  tendency  to  feel  trapped  living  on  the  other  side  of  the  world." 
Now  that  you've  earned  your  international  indie  credentials,  can  we  expect 
to  see  you  in  Armageddon  2:  Revenge  of  the  Rockl  "Only  if  the  world  gets 
destroyed.  I'm  still  quite  green,  but  ultimately  it's  my  dream  to 
be  in  a  position  where  I  have  a  choice.  It  comes  down  to  whether 
a  story  is  worth  telling."  — KRISTA  smith 


IGUST     19  9  9 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY     CLIFF      WATTS 


VANITY     FAIR 


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very  ranter  wants  a  chance  to  rag.  Runs  .Smith's  got 
Ins  lag,  one  that's  gaining  enough  size  (circulation, 
10,000)  and  stature  to  frighten  the  entrenched  Vil- 
lage Voice.  As  editor,  publisher,  C.E.O.,  and  major- 
ity owner  of  the  petulant  alternative  weekly  the 
New  York  Press,  Smith    as  the  "Mugger"  colum- 
nist   expends  a  massive  amount  of  ink  dissing  the 
mainstream  media,  thereby  ensuring  that  he  will  be 
read  by  all  of  his  targets.  On  the  phone  in  his 
Flower  District  office  in  Manhattan,  though,  he  oc- 
casionally tempers  his  zeal  to  ask  for  advice  from 
ial  Jim  Larkin,  for  example,  No.  3  on  Smith's  speed  dial 
and  another  alternative-paper  co-owner  and  C.E.O.  (the 
New  Times  chain).  "Smith  calls  to  ask  me  which  way  is  up," 
says  Larkin.  "He  has  no  clue  about  business."  Nevertheless, 
Smith,  44,  did  have  enough  savvy  in  1977  to  invest  $10,000 
with  partner  and  fellow  Johns  Hopkins  alum  Alan  Hirsch 
(2)  to  launch  the  City  Paper  in  Baltimore,  which  they  sold 
for  nearly  $4  million  in  1987,  seeding  the  freebie  New  York 
Press  and  pressuring  the  "ossified"  and  "predictable"  Village 
Voice  to  go  gratis  as  well  three  years  ago.  "It's  not  a  friendly 
competition  at  all,"  Smith  says.  "I  can't  stand  them."  Smith 
takes  the  people's  pulse  by  phoning  Weekly 
Standard  staffer  and  New  York  Press  colum- 
nist Christopher  Caldwell  (4).  "Russ  calls 
when  he's  outraged  on  some  political  matter," 
says  Caldwell,  "and  he  figures  I'm  bound 
™  to  know  about  exit  polls."  Additional  Belt- 
way info  comes  from  conservative  Wall  Street  Journal  edito- 
rialist John  Fund  (7).  Is  Smith,  the  married  father  of  two 
young  boys,  as  good  at  getting  it  as  he  is  at  giving  it  out 
over  the  phone  and  in  print?  "I  get  a  lot  of  rude  messages 
and  obscene  faxes  and  voice  mail,"  he  says.  And  once,  a 
disgruntled  reader  sent  him  a  tinfoil  package  of  species- 
unspecified  feces.  Muckraking  happens.  — melissa  davis 


Night-Table 
Reading 

Ted  Rail 

cartoonist,  writer, 
radio  talk- show  host 


Death  in  the  Woods 

and  Other  Stories, 

by  Sherwood  Anderson  (Norton). 

"As  brilliantly  simple 

as  Winesburg,  Ohio,  these 

short  stories  about 

loss  and  alienation  are  obscure, 

yet  unforgettable. " 


Jonathan 
Nahmias  Morr 

restaurateur 

Memoirs  of  a  Geisha, 

by  Arthur  Golden 
(Vintage).  "Finally  finding 

the  time  to  read 
this  classic  story,  I  realized 

an  interesting 

insight  into  a  fascinating 

part  of  the 

Japanese  culture. " 


AUGUST     19 


x 


Lit- 


ill  Clinton  could  go  miles  toward  repairing  his  Karma  by 
freeing  Native  American  leader  LEONARD  PELTIER,  whose 
memoir.  Prison  Writings  (St.  Martins),  shows  him  unbowed, 
despite  23  years  in  federal  prison  for  a  crime  he  most  likely 
did  not  commit. 
Also  this  month:  The  great  white  writer  rises  (with  a  little  help  from  son  Patrick) 
in  True  at  First  Light  (Scribner),  ERNEST  HEMINGWAY'S  fictional  memoir  of  his  final 
he-manly  rompings  in  Africa.  Five  years  ago,  a  cult  leader  under  siege  roasted  his 
entire  flock,  except  for  12  children;  now  those  children  are  disappearing  in  HOWARD 
and  SUSAN  KAMINSKY'S  suspense  story,  The  Twelve  (St.  Martin's).  In  In  the  Blink  of  an 
Eye  (Random  House),  veteran  A. P.  reporter  PAT  MILTON  sifts  through  the  F.B.I.'s  files 
on  the  unsolved  mystery  of  the  crash  of  TWA  Flight  800.  Get  into  ERIC  KOHLER'S  swingy  In  the 
Groove  (Chronicle),  album-cover  graphics  from  the  1940s  to  the  1960s.  The  works  of  the  archi- 
tect commissioned  to  design  the  Berlin  Holocaust  Memorial  are  showcased  in  Peter  Eisenman: 
Diagram  Diaries  (Universe).  GIOIA  DILIBERTO'S  bio  A  Useful  Woman  (Scribner)  delivers  the  vitals 
on  Jane  Addams,  early-20th-century  do-gooder  deity  to  the  poor.  To  benefit  unicef's  educational 
programs,  swanky-bag  fanciers  such  as  Henry  Kissinger,  Grandmaster  Flash,  and  Sharon  Stone  play 
ball  with  the  Louis  Vuitton  World  Cup  soccer  ball  in  Rebonds  (Louis  Vuitton/UNICEF).  In  A  Certain 
Age  (Doubleday),  former  lit-brat-packer  TAMA  JANOWITZ  satirizes  that 
increasingly  commonplace  creature,  the  female  desperate  to  marry 
well— before  her  biological  clock  blows  up.  Fifty  years  after  its  orig- 
inal publication,  E.  B.  WHITE'S  timeless  memoir,  Here  Is  New  York 
(the  Little  Bookroom),  recounts  his  early  days  in  1940s  Manhattan. 
A  quarter-century  after  Nixon's  resignation,  BOB  WOODWARD  revis- 
its the  scandal  that  made  him  and  examines  how  Watergate's 
heritage  continues  to  infect  and  inform  our  cultural  history  in 
Shadow  (Simon  &  Schuster).  STEVEN  HELLER  and  LOUISE  FILI  put 
together  a  glorious  typographical  history  from  the  Victorian  era  to 
the  Digital  Age  in  Typology  (Chronicle).  STACEY  RICHTER  goes  for 
the  absurd  jugular  in  her  warped  and  witty  stories  in  My  Date 
with  Satan  (Scribner).  It's  my  guess  that  more  people  lose  their 
virginity  in  the  summer  than  at  any  other  time  of  year— pop 
your  cherry  with  Virgin  Fiction  2  (Rob  Weisbach  Books), 
collected  short  fiction  by  previously 
unpublished  writers.  Go  forth  and  *WM/j/jj 

conquer.  — elissa  schappell 


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Counterclockwise  from  top 
right:  boxing  promoter  Don  King 
handles  two  Louis  Vuitton 
World  Cup  soccer  balls  (under 
Lady  Liberty's  watchful  eye);  vin- 
tage album  covers  for  Anatomy 
of  a  Murder  (1959),  The  Billie 
Holiday  Story  (1959),  and 
i     Eddy  Duchin  (1940);  an 
I     advertising  page  from  the 
i     Hungarian 

I    periodical  Uj  Fold,  1921; 
\     a  1983  Vanity  Fair  cover 
prototype,  designed 
by  Henrietta  Condak. 


AUGUST     19 


GUCCI 


sunglasses 


Fig.  I 


ADVERTISING- 
JINGLE 
WRITERS 

COMEDY                 ROGAINE 

"HUG  ALERT!" 

CD-ROM 

WRITERS                     USERS 

^       1      w 

SCREAMERS 

AFICIONADOS 

38^ 

4^9 

^^^ 

'  wearers] 

[Sweater-vest  wearers] 

^|             [Disney  Imagineers] 

Fig.  2. 

Fig 

.3. 

PEOPLE  WHO 
REGULARLY 

SEND 
MEALS  BACK 


TO  THE 


PEOPLE  WHO 
STILL 

EMPLOY 
THE  PHRASE 

"DON'T 


[People  who  work  for 
Barbra  Streisand] 

Fig.  4. 


[Babylon  5  chat-room  visitors] 
Fig.  6. 


PRADA 
WEARERS 


[Party  plan 

Fig.  9. 


Sets  and  Setsibility 

Venn  diagrams  for  the  90s 


Commonalities  are  the  linchpin  of  sociology. 
If  a  person  hails  from  Britain  and  that  per- 
son is  from  a  prominent  family,  does  it  nec- 
essarily follow  that  that  person  has  an  an- 
cestor whose  name  was  Ethelred?  Likewise,  if  a 
person  is  prone  to  uttering  "Love  ya!"  and  that 
person  owns  more  than  one  porcelain  Pierrot 
doll,  does  it  necessarily  follow  that  that  person 
is  employed  as  a  talent  agent?  Yes. 

—HENRY  ALFORD 


LITERATI 


DIVORCEES 


['Zine  editors] 

Fig.  5. 


GUN  MICRO- 

OWNERS  BREWERS 


[Vodka-stinger  drinkers] 

Fig.  7. 


[Civil  War  re-enactors 

Fig.  8. 


NOW 


124  VANITY     FAIR 


BROADWAY 
PHENOMS 


TREASURES 
OF  THE 

CLASSICAL 
WORLD 


<r' 


[Carol  Channing] 

Fig.  11. 


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■■*** 


GUCCI 


' 


Bthe  H^^wood  consensus, 
Ktified  by  two  Oscar  nominations: 
TEdward  Norton  is  the  finest  actor  of 
his  generation.  And  this  after  only  six 
films  (including  Primal  Fear  and 
American  History  X),  in  which  he  had 
mostly  dark  character  roles.  As  he  stars 
in  Fight  Club,  an  even  darker  movie 
that  has  left  studio  executives  ashen, 
PETER  BISKIND  gets  a  look  at  the 
intellect  behind  the  plaudits,  and 
the  surprising  next  step — a  romantic 
comedy  with  Norton  as  co-writer, 
director,  and  star 


~^.,  ^*i± 


PHOTOGRAPHS     BY     HERB      RITTS     •     STYLED     BY     L'WREN      SCOTT 


YOU  TALKING  TO  ME? 


- 


Edward  Norton 

contemplates  his  voluble  self, 

May  15, 1999,  at  the 

Alder  Mansion,  Yonkers, 

New  York. 


% 


f. 


kay,  it's  only  a 
movie,  I  kepi  reminding  myself  as  I  watched 
Edward  Norton  screaming  in  agony.  He 
was  trying  to  squirm  away  from  Brad  Pitt 
who,  seated  at  a  kitchen  table,  had  just 
planted  a  kiss  on  the  back  of  Norton's 
hand,  then  held  it  fast  while  sprinkling  lye 
on  the  moist  imprint  of  his  valentine.  I 
could  practically  smell  the  flesh  burning 
as  the  caustic  chemical  hissed  and  crack- 
led like  hot  fat  and  heaved  up  a  small 
hillock  of  raw  tissue  in  the  shape  of  Pitt's 
lips  while  he  lectured  Norton  on  the  vir- 
tues of  pain  and  humiliation,  on  the  im- 
portance of  slicing  away  the  safety  net,  on 
the  high  of  free  fall,  the  Janis  Joplin  of  it 
all.  Freedom  is  having  nothing  left  to  lose. 

This  was  a  scene  from  Norton's  upcom- 
ing film  Fight  Club.  You  might  have  thought 
that  last  year's  American  History  X  would 
be  a  hard  act  to  follow,  given  that  Norton's 
inhabitation— "impersonation"  just  doesn't 
seem  to  be  the  right  word  for  it— of  a  ven- 
omous skinhead  was  so  hatefully  and  un- 
cannily convincing.  But  walking  as  always 
on  the  wild  side  of  end-of-the-century  Amer- 
ican cinema,  Norton  has  now  found  some- 
thing even  weirder  and  darker  with  Fight 
Club,  in  which  he  segues  from  extreme  pol- 
itics to  extreme  fighting. 

The  film  tells  the  story  of  a  man  who— 
under  the  influence  of  a  charismatic  strang- 
er played  by  Pitt— wanders  from  the  safety 
of  his  nine-to-five  life  into  a  no-man's-land 
of  violence  and  social  insurrection.  Think 
of  Falling  Down  directed  by  Antonin  Ar- 
taud  instead  of  Joel  Schumacher.  Imagine 
a  white-collar  cipher  so  anesthetized  by 
ennui  that  he  can  find  peace  only  through 
sitting  in  on  terminal-disease  support 
groups— testicular  cancer,  melanoma,  blood 
parasites— or  by  engaging  in  barefisted 
fighting,  where  similarly  anomic  men  dis- 
figure one  another.  The  point  is  not  to 
win,  but  to  experience  maximum  pain  in  a 
desperate  attempt  to  find  some  shred  of 


authenticity,  What's  shocking  here  is  not 
only  the  violence  we've  all  seen  that  be- 
fore but  oddly  enough  the  context,  the 
metaphysics.  This  isn't  "meaningless  vio- 
lence." The  meaning  is  precisely  what 
churns  the  stomach. 

According  to  a  source,  even  Norton's  fa- 
ther, after  reading  the  script,  said  some- 
thing like  "Oh  my  God,  you're  not  going 
to  make  this,  are  you?"  But  in  a  fit  of  filial 
disobedience  that  might  well  have  been  lift- 
ed from  the  movie,  Norton  went  ahead 
anyway.  Directed  by  David  Fincher,  who 
previously  gave  us  Seven,  and  based  on  a 
brilliantly  mordant  first  novel  by  a  writer 
with  an  unpronounceable  name,  Chuck 
Palahniuk,  Fight  Club  is  a  film  finely  cali- 
brated to  raise  the  blood  pressure  of  the 
guardians  of  civic  virtue,  to  epater  the 
William  Bennetts  of  the  world,  only  the 
movie's  ambitions  are  larger,  beyond  shock 
toward  a  kind  of  wisdom.  It  is  arrogant, 
nasty,  and  blackly  comic,  and  Norton  is  ex- 
cited about  it,  as  well  he  might  be.  It's  one 
thing  to  carry  a  low-budget  film  like  Ameri- 
can History  X;  it's  quite  another  to  shoulder 
a  $60-million-or-so  picture  that  also  stars 
Brad  Pitt.  It's  going  to  ratchet  Norton's  ca- 
reer up  another  notch,  ratify  his  reputation 
for  mainlining  the  most  interesting  pictures 
coming  out  of  today's  Hollywood. 

"I  think  it's  good  sometimes  to  make 
things  that  are  disturbing,  that  hold  a  mir- 
ror up  to  the  Zeitgeist,"  Norton  says.  "The 
first  time  I  saw  the  picture,  I  walked  out 
and  it  was  really  bright  outside,  and  I 
couldn't  have  told  you  whether  I  was  in 
there  for  half  an  hour  or  five  hours.  [A 
friend  said  to  me,]  'I  cannot  believe  that 
this  film  got  made,  let  alone  got  made  by  a 
major  studio.'  For  them,  at  first,  it  was 
about  being  at  parties  with  other  executives, 
saying,  'You  wouldn't  believe  the  fucking 
movie  we're  making.'  Now  that  the  movie 
has  gotten  made  and  is  actually  everything 
we  said  it  was  going  to  be,  it's  'Oh  shit!'" 

Norton  enjoys  talking.  Helena  Bonham 
Carter,  also  in  Fight  Club  (on  leave  from 
her  self-described  "corset"  dramas),  puts 
it  best:  He's  "vocally  incontinent;  he  talks 
a  lot,  but  it's  good  talk."  The  words  tum- 
ble out,  pell-mell,  in  a  slightly  hesitant 
fashion,  a  distant  echo  of  the  start-stop  ca- 
dences of  the  seemingly  sweet  Kentucky 
boy  Norton  played  to  such  good  effect  in 
his  first  film,  Primal  Fear,  the  one  who 
turned  out  to  be  a  psycho  finger  chopper 
feigning  a  split  personality.  In  person,  with 
his  slender  frame,  narrow  shoulders,  and 
close-cropped  hair  of  no  particular  color, 
Norton  looks  surprisingly  unsurprising. 
After  pumping  up  to  play  the  scary  Ober- 
mensch  in  American  History  X,  he's  back 
to  normal— Clark  Kent,  the  air  let  out  of 


a  Macy's  Thanksgiving  Day  balloon. 
Fight  ( 'tub  he  makes  that  ordinarind 
work  for  him.  With  his  goofy,  crook 
grin  he's  a  younger,  bolder  Tom  Hani 
the  Everyman  who  leads  the  audien 
through  Fincher's  inferno. 

It's  hard  to  believe  that  Norton  h 
been  "around,"  in  the  public  sense, 
only  three  years.  In  his  brief  career  he 
shown  a  truly  astonishing  range:  at  hor 
with  rage,  violence,  and  psychosis,  he 
also  the  sweet,  lovesick  swain  who  sei 
naded  Drew  Barrymore  in  Woody  Allei 
Everyone  Says  I  Love  You  as  well  as  t 
put-upon  First  Amendment  lawyer  in 
People  vs.  Larry  Flynt.  And  now  he  is  pi 
paring  Keeping  the  Faith,  a  picture  whi< 
couldn't  be  more  different  from  Finchei 
film.  Keeping  the  Faith  is  a  romantic  com 
dy,  a  love  triangle  in  the  vein  of  Ti 
Philadelphia  Story,  set  in  New  York,  thBk 
Norton  is  directing— his  debut— as  well 
producing,  co-writing,  and  starring 
along  with  Ben  Stiller  and  Jenna  Elfman 


Already  Norton  bears  tl 
burden  of  his  talent,  wi 
twin  Oscar  nominations 
for  Primal  Fear  and  Ame 
ican  History  X—'m  a  me: 
six  outings.  Behind  h 
back,  the  honorific  "pro 
igy"  is  whispered  loudly.  Says  John  Dar 
who  directed  him  in  Rounders,  "I  alwa; 
sort  of  cringe  when  people  say  he's  the  be 
actor  of  his  generation  because  I  thin] 
Good  God,  what  is  he— 29?  How  would  yc 
like  to  be  stuck  with  that  label  at  that  age1; 
Dustin  Hoffman's  name  has  a  habit  < 
popping  up  in  the  vicinity  of  Norton,  as  d 
those  of  Al  Pacino  and  Robert  De  Niro- 
the  holy  trinity  of  70s-character-actor: 
become-stars  to  whom  Norton  is  the  latei 
heir  apparent.  Norton  reveres  Hoffmai 
and  I  am  reminded  of  the  way  Hoffman  d 
scribed  the  younger  actor  after  their  fin 
encounter,  a  dinner  several  months  ago  at 
Japanese  restaurant  in  Los  Angeles  whei 
both  got  well  lubricated  on  sake.  As  Hof 
man  recalls  it,  "When  I  meet  somebody, 
always  think,  How  would  I  cast  them? 
said  to  him,  'I  would  never  think  of  you  a 
an  actor— you're  like  a  graduate  student  c 
a  young  professor  at  Harvard.'  He  had 
habit  of  looking  down  when  he  talkec 
looking  at  the  table,  almost  stammering.  1 
wasn't  just  a  shyness,  as  it  appeared  to  b 
at  first,  it  was  connecting  to  the  thoughl 
And  I  said  I  believed  that  was  the  predon 
inant  quality  about  his  work,  the  effort  t 
get  to  the  center  of  things.  He  sniffs  in  th 
right  places." 

It  is  the  first  week  of  May,  and  Norton  i 
frantic,  or  as  frantic  as  he  gets,  which  mean 


130     |      VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


K-KMCKLKI) 


Norton  sees  the  brutal, 

darkly  comic  Fight  Club  as  a  Gen  \ 

call  to  arms:  "The  script  was 

like  a  fist  angrily  slamming  on  the 

table."  Norton's  father  read  it. 

too.  and  reportedly  said.  "Oh  my 

God.  you're  not  goinn  to 

make  this,  are  von?" 


*  Bd 


N 


say  Edwards 

the  best  actor  of    *"^~ 

his  generation 

because  I  think,  \ 

Good  God, 

what  is  he— 29?r 


C* 


/ 


m»  i 


\ 


»<*».    i 


n 


IN  PICTURES 

Norton,  who  considers 

himself  a  character  actor, 

reveres  Dustin  Hoffman. 

Flying  to  Los  Angeles 

for  his  first  big  screen  test, 

he  thought,  "O.K., 

this  is  the  trip  Dustin 

made  to  test  for 

The  Graduate.  He  did  it, 

I  can  do  it." 


••••»•«» 


sheepishly  for  not  being  as  focused  as  he 
i  iuld  pass  unnoticed  in  someone  less  fa- 
il   1  le's  re-recording  dialogue  for  Fight  Club  in 

qi  on  weekends  at  the  same  time  as  he  tries  to 
i  ks  ol  intensive  pre-production  for  Keeping  the  Faith. 
■  i  date  is  looming  ominously  near,  just  three  weeks  away. 
In  whal  few  spare  hours  he  has  he's  making  drastic-  last-minute 
script  revisions  with  his  writing  partner,  Stuart  Blumberg,  and 
finding  time,  as  he  unenthusiastically  picks  over  a  salad  in  a 
dings  New  York  City  coffee  shop,  to  talk  late  into  the  night 
about  his  least  favorite  subject,  himself.  The  joint  is  almost  as 
anonymous  as  Norton,  dressed  as  he  is  in  functional,  nonde- 
script clothes:  a  lightweight  gray  pea  coat,  a  blue  short-sleeved 
shut  of  some  indefinable  synthetic  material,  and  jeans. 

Norton  belongs  to  the  less-is-more  school  of  publicity.  He  is 
not  going  to  talk  about  his  relationship  with  Courtney  Love,  and 
neither  are  his  friends.  "When  I  serve  up  my  own  private  experi- 
ences as  fodder  for  the  cheap  drama  of  the  press  it  leaves  me 
with  a  very  hollow  feeling,  like  I've  given  up  something  that  is 
part  of  what  makes  my  own  life,  and  it's  just  not  worth  it,"  ex- 
plains Norton,  adding,  "Too  much  familiarity  can  get  in  the  way 
[of  the  audience].  It  diminishes  your  own  capacity  to  be  an  emp- 
ty vessel  that  people  can  fill  up  with  different  things."  Conse- 
quently, the  Chinese  know  more  about  American  warheads  than 
anyone  knows  about  what  went  down  between  Norton  and  Love, 
who  met  on  the  set  of  Tlie  People  vs.  Larry  Flynt  in  1996,  when 
Love  played  Flynt's  wife  Althea.  Norton  is  about  as  far  from 
Kurt  Cobain  as  you  can  get,  and  at  the  time,  Hustler  magazine 
auteur  Flynt  credited  Norton— and  director  Milos  Forman— with 
getting  Love  through  the  performance  without  a  meltdown.  The 
couple  apparently  broke  up  earlier  this  year,  though  Norton  has 
denied  they  were  romantically  involved.  More  recently,  he  has 
been  linked  in  the  press  to  the  usual  suspects,  including  a  sight- 
ing with  Cameron  Diaz  over  Super  Bowl  weekend  in  Miami.  He 
attended  the  Oscars  with  good  friend  Drew  Barrymore,  with 
whom  he  once  shared  an  apartment  in  New  York.  Says  Harvey 
Weinstein,  whose  company,  Miramax,  financed  Rounders,  "I  told 
them  if  they  each  didn't  find  somebody  else  in  a  year,  they'd 
have  to  marry  each  other." 

Norton's  wariness  toward  the  press  is  also  a  response  to  the 
shabby  treatment  of  his  friends.  He  dashed  off  a  letter  to  The 
New  Yorker  in  defense  of  Love  after  the  magazine  published  what 
he  considered  to  be  a  negative  profile.  Likewise,  he  was  appalled 
that  his  pal  Kevin  Spacey's  private  life  was  dragged  through  Es- 
quire. "That,"  he  says,  "was  really,  really  disturbing  to  me." 

His  friends  are  equally  protective  of  Norton,  invariably  describ- 
ing him  as  kind,  thoughtful,  and  generous,  the  type  of  guy  who 
helps  old  ladies  cross  the  street.  Says  Weinstein,  "Edward  is  a 
consummate  gentleman.  It's  like  he  stepped  out  of  another  era." 
Adds  Howard  Koch  Jr.,  who  is  producing  Keeping  the  Faith,  "He 
doesn't  do  drugs,  he  doesn't  drink.  He  hasn't  had  the  movies  that 
have  been  commercially  successful  yet,  but  everybody  wants  to 
work  with  him  because  we  all  know  where  his  career  is  going." 

And  yet,  roles  such  as  those  he  played  in  Primal  Fear  and 
American  History  X  raise  the  Dark  Side  Question,  as  in:  Is  there 
a  Mr.  Hyde  to  Norton's  Dr.  Jekyll? 

"There's  clearly  a  very  alive  and  well  dark  side  to  Edward 
Norton,"  says  Gregory  Hoblit,  who  directed  Primal  Fear.  "I 
mean,  you  don't  have  to  be  Charlie  Manson  to  have  a  dark  side. 
Edward  is  no  choirboy.  You  don't  bring  continued  on  pagi   i82 


Lithe 
Spirit 


o   plastic 


starlet  she.  The  name— Saffron  Domini  Bur- 
rows—is real.  The  astonishing  body  is  real-all 
six  feet  of  it,  including  the  auburn  tresses  and  a 
cleft  chin  that  could  wow  Cary  Grant.  Her  par- 
ents (who  live  in  North  London  but  divorced 
when  Saffron  was  two)  are  left-wing  teachers 
and  fervent  trade  unionists  who  took  her  on 
protest  marches  instead  of  seaside  holidays.  At 
25,  their  daughter  is  equally  passionate:  a  so- 
cialist, civil-rights  activist,  and  staunch  feminist 
who  would  rather  talk  about  "the  reactionary 
backlash"  against  women  than  her  romances. 
Not  for  Saffron  the  weaselly  evasions  of  apa- 
thetic young  women  afraid  of  ideological  la- 
bels: "I  think  we  should  own  these  things  and 
be  proud  of  them!" 

But  her  love  life  has  been  star-studded: 
Daniel  Day-Lewis,  with  whom  she  appeared  in 
In  the  Name  of  the  Father;  Alan  Cumming, 
whom  she  met  on  Circle  of  Friends;  and  Saf- 
fron's roommate  of  the  last  couple  of  years, 
Mike  Figgis,  who  directed  her  in  The  Loss  of 
Sexual  Innocence,  a  hallucinatory  meditation 
on  sex  and  death  in  which  Burrows  played  a 
doomed  contemporary  Eve,  and  in  Strindberg's 
Miss  Julie,  a  fall  release.  Next  up:  Renny  Har- 
lin's  Deep  Blue  Sea,  in  which  Saffron  stars  as  a 
doctor  trying  to  cure  degenerative  brain  disease 
through  her  experiments  on  sharks.  Guess  who 
looks  great  in  a  black  wet  suit. 

-LESLIE  BENNETTS 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH    BY     ROBERT    ERDMANN 


m:  How  I  Learned  to  Stop 
Worrying  ami  Love  the  Bomb, 
the  second  ol  the  films  he 
mad*  after  moving 
to  England. 


*0 


^-^ 


The  world  outside  the  gates  of 

Stanley  Kubrick's  English  manor 

house  may  have  seen  the  legendary 

director  as  cold,  arrogant,  even  a 

bit  crazy.  But  to  those  who 

entered  the  citadel  of  Kubrick's 

obsessive,  often  brutal  devotion  to 

filmmaking,  his  life  made  pure 

and  perfect  sense.  At  the 

premature  end  of  a  career  that 

spanned  Dr.  Strangelove,  A 

Clockwork  Orange,  2001:  A  Space 

Odyssey,  Barry  Lyndon, 

Jjolita,  The  Shining,  and  this 

summer's  Eyes  Wide  Shut, 

MICHAEL  HERR,  who  co-wrote  the 

screenplay  for  Full  Metal  Jacket, 

pays  unsentimental  homage 

T\his  longtime  friend,  remembering 

the  humor,  the  cleanly  burning 

intelligence,  the  outrageous  sanity 

of  a  20th-century  master 


i  nee  Olivier s 
■  -.us  is  the 
<  implex  character 
ever  to  appear 
in  an  epic-genre 

film— almost 
Shakespearean. 


^ 


N 


EPIC  STRUGGLE 


jbrick  with  Tony  Curtis  and 
Laurence  Olivier  on  the  set 
rtacus,  1959.  His  grievances 
ith  star-producer  Kirk  Douglas 
led  him  to  leave 


I 


Somehow  or  other  we  get  into  this  rather 
heavy  rap— about  death,  and  infinity,  and  die 
origin  of  time— you  know  the  sort  of  thing. 
—Terry  Southern 


W 


I 

1 


tanley  Kubrick  was  a 


friend  of  mine,  insofar  as  people  like  Stan- 
ley have  friends,  and  as  if  there  are  any 
people  like  Stanley  now.  Famously  reclu- 
sive, as  I'm  sure  you've  heard,  he  was  in 
fact  a  complete  failure  as  a  recluse,  unless 
you  believe  that  a  recluse  is  simply  some- 
one who  seldom  leaves  his  house.  Stanley 
saw  a  lot  of  people.  Sometimes  he  even 
went  out  to  see  people,  but  not  often,  very 
rarely,  hardly  ever.  Still,  he  was  one  of  the 
most  gregarious  men  I  ever  knew,  and  it 
didn't  change  anything  that  most  of  this 
conviviality  went  on  over  the  phone.  He 
viewed  the  telephone  the  way  Mao  viewed 
warfare,  as  the  instrument  of  a  protracted 
offensive  where  control  of  the  ground  was 
critical  and  timing  crucial,  while  time  itself 
was  meaningless,  except  as  something  to 
be  kept  on  your  side.  An  hour  was  noth- 
ing, mere  overture,  or  opening  move,  or 
gambit,  a  small  taste  of  his  virtuosity.  The 
writer  Gustav  Hasford  claimed  that  he  and 
Stanley  were  once  on  the  phone  for  seven 
hours,  and  I  went  over  three  with  him  many 
times.  I've  been  hearing  about  all  the  peo- 
ple who  say  they  talked  to  Stanley  on  the 
last  day  of  his  life,  and  however  many  of 
them  there  were,  I  believe  them  all. 

Somebody  who  knew  him  45  years  ago, 
when  he  was  starting  out,  said,  "Stanley  al- 
ways acted  like  he  knew  something  you 
didn't  know,"  but  honestly,  he  didn't  have 
to  act.  Not  only  that,  by  the  time  he  was 
through  having  what  he  called,  in  quite  an- 
other context,  "strenuous  intercourse"  with 
you,  he  knew  most  of  what  you  knew  as 
well.  Hasford  called  him  an  earwig;  he'd 
go  in  one  ear  and  not  come  out  the  other 
until  he'd  eaten  clean  through  your  head. 

He  had  the  endearing  and  certainly  se- 
ductive habit  when  he  talked  to  you  of 
slipping  your  name  in  every  few  sentences, 
particularly  in  the  punch  line,  and  there 
was  always  a  punch  line.  He  had  an  espe- 


VANITY     FAIR     |     I  3  9 


think  just  because  you've  known  a  few  cont 


mperamenl  anyway,  hut  I 
omen  who  found  him 

i  ii  urn.  A  icu  of  them  were 
ises. 
Americans  move  to  London  and 
in  three  weeks  they're  talking  like  Denholm 
Elliott.  Stanley  picked  up  the  odd  English 
locution,  hui  it  didn't  take  Henry  Higgins 
to  place  him  as  pure,  almost  stainless 
Bronx.  Stanley's  speech  was  very  fluent, 
melodious  even.  In  spite  of  the  Bronx  nasal- 
caustic,  perhaps  the  shadow  of  some  ade- 
noidal trauma  long  ago,  it  was  as  close  to 
the  condition  of  music  as  speech  can  get 
and  still  he  speech,  like  a  very  well-read 
jazz  musician  talking,  with  a  pleasing  and 
graceful  Groucho-like  rushing  and  ebbing 
of  inflection  for  emphasis  and  suggested 
quotation  marks  to  convey  amused  dis- 
dain, over-enunciating  phrases  that  struck 
him  as  fabulously  banal,  with  lots  of  innu- 
endo, and  lots  of  latent  sarcasm,  and  some 
not  so  latent,  lively  tempi,  brilliant  timing, 
eloquent  silences,  and,  always,  masterful, 
seamless  segues— "Lemme  change  the  sub- 
ject for  just  a  minute,"  or  "What  were  we 
into  before  we  got  into  this?"  I  never  heard 
him  try  to  do  other  voices,  or  dialects, 
even  when  he  was  telling  Jewish  jokes. 
Stanley  quoted  other  people  all  the  time, 
people  in  the  industry  whom  he'd  spoken 
to  that  morning  (Steven  and  Mike,  Warren 
and  Jack,  Tom  and  Nicole),  or  people  who 
died  a  thousand  years  ago,  but  it  was  al- 
ways Stanley  speaking. 

hen  I  met  him 
in  1980,  I  was 
not  just  a  sub- 
scriber to  the 
Stanley  legend, 
I  was  frankly 
susceptible  to  it. 
He'd  heard  that  I  was  living  in  London 
from  a  mutual  friend,  David  Cornwell 
(b.k.a.  John  le  Carre),  and  invited  us  for 
dinner  and  a  movie.  The  movie  was  a 
screening  of  The  Shining  at  Shepperton 
Studios  a  few  weeks  before  its  American  re- 
lease, followed  by  dinner  at  Childwick 
Bury,  the  120-acre  estate  near  St.  Albans, 
an  hour  north  of  London,  that  Stanley  and 
his  family  and  their  dogs  and  cats  had  just 
moved  into.  Stanley  wanted  to  meet  me  be- 
cause he'd  liked  Dispatches,  my  book  about 
Vietnam.  It  was  the  first  thing  he  said  to 
me  when  we  met.  The  second  thing  he 
said  to  me  was  that  he  didn't  want  to  make 
a  movie  of  it.  He  meant  this  as  a  compli- 
ment, sort  of,  but  he  also  wanted  to  make 
sure  I  wasn't  getting  any  ideas.  He'd  read 
the  book  several  times  looking  for  the  story 


in  it,  and  quoted  bits  of  it,  some  of  them 
quite  long,  from  memory  during  dinner. 
And  since  I'd  loved  his  movies  lor  some- 
thing like  25  years  by  this  time,  I  was 
touched,  flattered,  and  very  happy  to  meet 
him,  because  I  was  of  course  fairly  aware 
that  it  was  unusual  to  meet  him.  Stanley 
wasn't  someone  you  ran  into  at  a  party  and 
struck  up  a  relationship  with. 

He  was  thinking  about  making  a  war 
movie  next,  but  he  wasn't  sure  which  war, 
and  in  fact,  now  that  he  mentioned  it,  not 
even  so  sure  he  wanted  to  make  a  war 
movie  at  all. 

He  called  me  a  couple  of  nights  later  to 
ask  me  if  I'd  read  any  Jung.  I  had.  Was  I 
familiar  with  the  concept  of  the  Shadow, 
our  hidden  dark  side?  I  assured  him  that 
I  was.  We  did  half  an  hour  on  the  Shad- 
ow, and  how  he  really  wanted  to  get  it 
into  his  war  picture.  And  oh,  did  I  know 
of  any  good  Vietnam  books,  "you  know, 
Michael,  something  with  a  story?"  I 
didn't.  I  told  him  that  after  seven  years 
working  on  a  Vietnam  book  and  nearly 
two  more  on  the  film  Apocalypse  Now,  it 
was  about  the  last  thing  in  the  world  I 
was  interested  in.  He  thanked  me  for  my 
honesty,  my  "almost  blunt  candor,"  and 
said  that,  probably,  what  he  most  wanted 
to  make  was  a  film  about  the  Holocaust, 
but  good  luck  putting  all  of  that  into  a 
two-hour  movie.  And  then  there  was  this 
other  book  he  was  fascinated  by— he  was 
fairly  sure  I'd  never  heard  of  it— Arthur 
Schnitzler's  novella  Traumnovelle,  which 
means  "Dream  Novel,"  meaninglessly 
called  Rhapsody  in  the  only  English  edi- 
tion available  at  that  time.  He'd  read  it 
more  than  20  years  before,  and  bought 
the  rights  to  it  in  the  early  70s  (it's  the 
book  that  Eyes  Wide  Shut  is  based  on), 
and  the  reason  I'd  probably  never  heard 
of  it  (he  started  to  laugh)  was  that  he'd 
bought  up  every  single  existing  copy  of  it. 
Maybe  he'd  send  me  one.  I  could  read  it 
and  tell  him  what  I  thought. 

"You  know,  just  read  it  and  we'll  talk. 
I'm  interested  to  know  what  you  think. 
And  Michael,  ask  around  among  your 
friends  from  the  war,  maybe  they  know  a 
good  Vietnam  story.  You  know,  like  at  the 
next  American  Legion  meeting?  Oh,  and 
Michael,  do  me  a  favor,  will  you?" 

"Sure." 

"Don't  tell  anybody  what  we've  been 
talking  about." 

The  next  afternoon  a  copy  of  the 
Schnitzler  book  arrived,  along  with  the  pa- 
perback edition  of  Raul  Hilberg's  enor- 
mous The  Destruction  of  the  European 
Jews,  delivered  by  Stanley's  driver,  Emilio, 


who  whether  I  realized  it  or  not  was  abo 
to  become  my  new  best  friend. 

I  read  the  Schnitzler  right  away,  ar 
that's  when  I  had  my  early  inkling  of  he 
smart  Stanley  really  was.  Truumnoveh 
published  in  Vienna  in  1926,  is  the  full,  < 
cruciating  flowering  of  a  voluptuous  ai 
self-consciously  decadent  time  and  place, 
shocking  and  dangerous  story  about  s 
and  sexual  obsession  and  the  suffering 
sex.  In  its  pitiless  view  of  love,  marriag 
and  desire,  made  all  the  more  disturbii 
by  the  suggestion  that  either  all  of  it, 
maybe  some  of  it,  or  possibly  none  of  it, 
a  dream,  it  intrudes  on  the  concealed  roo 
of  Western  erotic  life  like  a  laser,  hintii 
discreetly,  from  behind  its  dream  cover, ' 
things  that  are  seldom  even  privately  a 
knowledged,  and  never  spoken  of  in  da 
light.  Stanley  thought  it  would  be  perfe 
for  Steve  Martin.  He'd  loved  Tlxe  Jerk. 

He'd  talked  about  this  book  with  a  lot 
people,  David  Cornwell  and  the  noveli 
Diane  Johnson  among  them,  and  sine 
David  and  Diane  and  I  later  talked  about 
among  ourselves  (and  out  of  Stanley's  hea 
ing,  I  think),  I  know  that  his  idea  for  it 
those  days  was  always  as  a  sex  comedy,  bi 
with  a  wild  and  somber  streak  runnir 
through  it.  This  didn't  make  a  lot  of  sen; 
to  us;  we  were  just  responding  to  the  text 
a  work  of  literary  art,  and  not  a  very  funr 
one.  Maybe  Traumnovelle  is  a  comedy 
the  sense  that  Don  Giovanni  is:  attempte 
rape  and  compulsive  pathetic  list-keepinj 
implied  impotence,  and  the  don  dragge 
down  into  hell  forever,  the  old  sex  machir 
ignorant  and  defiant  to  the  end.  A  pretty  si 
vere  and  upsetting  comedy,  not  very  gu 
coso,  and  not  the  essence  of  Traumnovell 
which  more  than  anything  else  is  siniste 
The  way  we  writers  saw  it,  it  was  as  frigh 
ening  as  77??  Shining.  Now  I  think  we  wei 
all  too  square  to  imagine  what  Stanley  sai 
in  Steve  Martin,  because  this  was  not  Tit 
Jerk.  This  could  have  turned  out  to  be  ai 
other  one  of  those  stories  you  heard 
many  times  about  him,  usually  from  can 
eramen  and  other  high-echelon  crew:  Stat 
ley  said  we  should  try  to  do  it  this  way  and 
said  it's  never  been  done  this  way,  and 
can't  he  done  this  way,  the  wrong  stops  o 
the  wrong  lens  on  the  wrong  camera,  and  h 
did  it  anyway,  and  he  was  right. 

We  talked  about  it  for  years,  startin 
that  afternoon,  because  I  don't  think  Em 
lio  could  have  made  it  back  to  St.  Alban 
before  Stanley  called.  "Didja  read  it?  Wha 
do  you  think?"  After  about  an  hour,  h 
asked  if  I'd  had  a  chance  to  look  at  th 
Hilberg  book  yet.  I  reminded  him  that  I 
only  just  gotten  it. 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


aks  that  you  can  imagine  what  Stanley  was  like. 


When  he  sent  you  a  book,  he  wanted 
du  to  read  it,  and  not  just  read  it,  but  to 
op  everything  and  get  into  it.  John  Calley, 
10  was  probably  Stanley's  closest  friend, 
Id  me  that  when  he  was  head  of  produc- 
>n  at  Warners  in  the  70s  and  first  work- 
g  with  him,  Stanley  sent  him  a  set  of 
azer's  Tfie  Golden  Bough,  unabridged,  and 
en  bugged  him  every  couple  of  weeks  for 
•year  about  reading  it.  Finally  Calley  said, 
itanley.  I've  got  a  studio  to  run.  I  don't 
ive  time  to  read  mythology."  "It  isn't  my- 
ology, John,"  Stanley  said.  "It's  your  life." 
I  picked  the  Hilberg  up  many  times 
id  put  it  down  again.  I  finally  read  it 
lly  a  few  years  ago,  when  I  knew  there 
as  no  possibility  that  Stanley  would  ever 
ie  it  for  a  film,  and  I  could  see  why 
anley  was  so  absorbed  by  it.  It  was  a 
irbidding  volume;  densely  laid  out  in  a 
vo-column  format,  it  was  nearly  800 
ages  long,  small  print,  heavily  footnoted, 
)  minutely  detailed  that  one  would  have 
t  be  more  committed  than  I  was  at  the 
loment  to  its  inconceivably  dreadful  sub- 
let. I  could  see  that  it  was  exhaustive;  it 
;rtainly  looked  like  hard  work,  and  it 
:ad  like  a  complete  log  of  the  Final  Solu- 
on.  And  every  couple  of  weeks,  Stanley 
ould  call  and  ask  me  if  I'd  read  it  yet. 
You  should  read  it,  Michael,  it's  monu- 
mttair  This  went  on  for  months. 
Finally  I  said,  "Stanley,  I  can't  make  it." 
"Why  not?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  guess  right  now  I  just 
on't  want  to  read  a  book  called  Tlie  De- 
ruction  of  the  European  Jews. " 
"No,  Michael,"  he  said.  "The  book  you 
on't  want  to  read  right  now  is  The  De- 
ruction  of  the  European  Jews,  Part  Two." 

ou  know,  Michael,  it's 
not  absolutely  true  in 
every  case  that  nobody 
likes  a  smart-ass,"  Stan- 
ley was  saying. 

I  once  described 
1980-83  as  one  phone 
ill  lasting  three  years,  with  interruptions, 
his  serial  call  had  many  of  the  character- 
tics  of  the  college  bull  session— long  free- 
irm  late-night  intellectual  inquiries,  dis- 
lrsions,  conversations,  displays,  and  I'd 
link,  Doesn't  this  guy  get  tired?—  like  talk- 
Ig  to  a  very  smart  kid  in  a  dorm  room 
Mil  three  in  the  morning.  But  then  Stan- 
y  never  went  to  college;  he  was  only  a 
unningly  accomplished  autodidact,  one 
f  those  people  we  may  hear  about  but 
irely  meet,  the  almost-but-not-quite- 
gendary  Man  on  Whom  Nothing  Is  Lost. 
"Hey,  Michael,  didja  ever  read  Herodo- 


tus? The  Father  of  Lies?"  or 
"Frankly,  I've  never  understood 
why  Schopenhauer  is  considered 
so  pessimistic.  I  never  thought 
he  was  pessimistic,  did  you,  Mi- 
chael?"—laughing  at  the  four  or 
five  things  he  found  so  funny  in 
this,  with  a  winsome  touch  of  self- 
deprecation,  half-apologetic  . . .  It's 
not  my  fault  I'm  so  smart.  And  I'd 
think,  Doesn't  he  have  anything  else 
to  do?  But  this  is  what  he  did.  These 
calls  were  about  information.  They 
were  about  Stanley's  work. 

We'd  be  talking  about  something,  like 
why  "most  war  movies  always  look  so 
phony,"  or  why  we  thought  this  movie  or 
that  book  was  such  a  hit,  and  we'd  be 
suddenly  off  across  2,000  years  of  West- 
ern culture,  "from  Plato  to  nato."  He  was 
just  an  old-fashioned  social  Darwinist 
(seemingly),  with  layer  upon  layer  of  the 
old,  now  vanishing  Liberal  Humanism, 
disappointed  but  undimmed,  and  without 
contradiction;  if  he  made  no  distinctions 
between  Art  and  Commerce,  or  Poetry 
and  Technology,  or  even  Personal  and  Pro- 
fessional, why  should  he  make  them  be- 
tween "Politics"  and  Philosophy? 

Stanley  had  views  on  everything,  but  I 
wouldn't  exactly  call  them  political.  ("Hey 
Michael,  what's  the  definition  of  a  neo- 
conservative?  A  liberal  who's  just  been 
mugged,  ha  ha  ha  ha")  His  views  on 
democracy  were  those  of  most  people  I 
know,  neither  left  nor  right,  not  exactly 
brimming  with  belief,  a  noble  failed  exper- 
iment along  our  evolutionary  way,  brought 
low  by  base  instincts,  money  and  self- 
interest  and  stupidity.  (If  a  novelist  express- 
es this  view,  he's  a  visionary,  apparently, 
but  if  a  movie  director  does,  he's  a  misan- 
thrope.) He  thought  the  best  system  might 
be  under  a  benign  despot,  although  he 
had  little  belief  that  such  a  man  could  be 
found.  He  wasn't  exactly  a  cynic,  but  he 
could  have  passed  for  one.  He  was  cer- 
tainly a  capitalist.  He  believed  himself  to 
be  a  realist.  He  was  known  to  be  a  tough 
guy.  The  way  I  see  him,  essentially,  he  was 
an  artist  to  his  fingertips,  and  he  needed  a 
lot  of  cover,  and  a  lot  of  control. 

For  the  most  part  we  talked  about  writ- 
ers, usually  dead  and  white  and  Euro- 
American,  hardly  the  current  curriculum. 
Stendhal  (half  an  hour),  Balzac  (two  hours), 
Conrad,  Crane,  Hemingway  (hours  and 
hours— "Do  you  think  it  was  true  that  he 
was  drunk  all  the  time,  even  when  he 
wrote?  Yeah?  Well,  I'll  have  to  find  out 
what  he  was  drinking  and  send  a  case  to 
all  my  writers").  Celine  ("My  favorite  anti- 


LITTLE  STANLEY 


This  photograph 
of  Kubrick  at  12  or  13 
suggests  "how  this 
dweeb-like  Jewish  kid 
rom  the  Bronx  came 
to  identify  so  intimately 
yet  so  appropriately 
with  Napoleon." 


^f*^"  -~  Semite"),  and  Kaf- 
ka, who  he  thought  was  the 
greatest  writer  of  the  century,  and  the  most 
misread:  People  who  used  the  word 
"Kafkaesque"  had  probably  never  read 
Kafka.  I'd  read  The  Golden  Bough  and 
didn't  have  to  go  through  that  again,  but 
he  urged  me  to  check  out  Machiavelli,  and 
Tlie  Art  of  War  (years  before  Michael  Ovitz 
slipped  him  a  copy),  and  Veblen's  Tlie  Tlie- 
ory  of  the  Leisure  Class.  He  had  a  taste  and 
a  gift  for  the  creative-subversive,  and  he 
dug  Swift  and  Malaparte  and  William  Bur- 
roughs, and  was  interested  that  Burroughs 
was  a  friend  of  mine.  I  got  him  to  read 
Faulkner,  Absalom,  Absalom!;  he  thought  it 
was  incredibly  beautiful,  but  "there's  no 
movie  in  it.  I  mean,  where's  the  weenie,  Mi- 
chael?" Then  he'd  be  into  something  else, 
the  "inevitable"  fiscal  and  social  disaster 
lurking  in  the  burgeoning  mutual-fund  mar- 
ket, or  how  he'd  like  to  make  a  movie  about 
doctors  because  "everybody  hates  doctors" 
(his  father  was  a  doctor),  or  the  savage 
abiding  mystery  of  Mother  Russia,  or  why 
opera  was  "quite  possibly  the  greatest  art 
form"  except,  oh  yeah,  maybe  for  the  mov- 
ies. Then  he'd  dish  about  the  movies. 

"Always  thinking,  huh,  Stanley?"  I  said 
after  one  of  those  exhausting  (for  me) 
rooftop-to-rooftop  riffs  of  his.  I  felt  that 
these  calls  were  starting  to  take  up  most  of 
my  time,  yet  I  knew  they  didn't  take  up 
most  of  his,  that  he  was  doing  other  things, 
"many  many  of  them."  I  acquired  a  sense 
of  awe  at  the  energy  that  had  coincided  so 
forcefully  with  my  own.  You  really  needed 
your  chops  for  this;  you'd  feel  like  some 
poor  traveler  caught  in  a  ground  bli//ard. 
3  to  30  times  a  week  and  usually  after  10 
at  night,  when  he  usually  started  wailing. 
Sometimes  I'd  duck  his  calls. 

We  talked  this  way.  with  occasional  \  is- 
its  to  his  house,  dinners  and  movies,  until 
he  found  Gustav  Hasford's  The  Short' 
Timers,  bought  the  rights,  wrote  a  long 
treatment  of  it.  and  asked  me  to  work  on 
the  script  with  him.  Then  we  really  started 
talking.  By  then  I  knew  I'd  been  working 
for  Stanley  from  the  minute  I  met  him. 


UGUST     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


^ 


assess 


• 


Stanley  could  never  be  ac- 
cused of  breaking  any  sump- 
tuary laws.  He  may  have 
been  the  master  of  Child- 
wick  Bury,  but  he  dressed 
like  a  cottager,  and  it  was 
very  becoming,  too.  He  wore 
the  same  thing  every  day,  beat  chinos, 
some  sort  of  work  shirt,  usually  in  one  of 
the  darker  shades  of  blue,  a  ripstop  cot- 
ton fatigue  jacket  with  many  pockets,  a 
pair  of  running  shoes,  so  well  broken  in 
that  you  almost  might  think  he  was  a  run- 
ner (and  not  a  man  who  liked  to  be  seat- 
ed), and  an  all-weather  anorak.  He  had 
something  like  a  dozen  or  so  sets  of  this 
outfit  in  his  closet,  so  he  changed  his 
clothes  every  day  but  never  his  wardrobe. 
When  his  daughter  Katharina  got  married 
in  1984,  he  went  to  the  Marks  &  Spencer 
in  St.  Albans  and  bought  a  dark-blue  suit 
for  £85,  and  a  white  shirt  and  a  tie,  and 
from  one  of  the  High  Street  shoe  shops  a 
pair  of  black  shoes  that  he  told  me  were 
made  of  cardboard.  But  he  had  never 
been  admired  for  his  dress  sense.  Even 
back  in  the  late  50s,  when  he  was  working 
in  Hollywood,  the  insouciance  of  his  attire 
was  remarked  upon  by  many  producers 
and  actors,  who  thought  that  he  dressed 
like  a  Beatnik. 

Body-blocked,  uncomfortable  in  physi- 
cal contact,  even  Stanley's  handshake  was 
a  bit  awkward.  The  last  time  I  saw  him— 
we  hadn't  seen  each  other  in  four  years- 
he  actually  put  an  arm  around  my  shoul- 
der, but  I  think  he  felt  he  might  have 
gone  too  far,  and  quickly  withdrew  it.  I 
don't  mean  to  suggest  that  Stanley  was 
not  a  warm  person,  only  that  he  didn't  ex- 
press it  in  kissing  or  hugging  or  even 
touching,  except  with  his  animals.  Apol- 
lonian not  Dionysian— I  couldn't  see  him 
on  the  dance  floor  breaking  hearts.  He 
hated  being  photographed,  and  the  few 
glimpses  of  Stanley  on  film,  in  his  daugh- 
ter Vivian  Kubrick's  documentary  The 
Making  of  "The  Shining,"  show  a  man 
who  clearly  doesn't  want  to  be  there  at 
all.  He  never  had  the  impulse  to  slip 
around  to  the  other  side  of  the  camera 
like  Orson  Welles  or  John  Huston  or 
Hitchcock.  I  think  he  felt  that  he  im- 
pressed quite  enough  of  himself  on  his 
films  without  that. 

He'd  once  been  a  chain-smoker,  and 
would  mooch  the  odd  cigarette,  but  very 
rarely.  He  wasn't  especially  appetitive,  ex- 
cept where  information  was  concerned.  He 
ate  temperately,  almost  never  took  a  drink, 
and  was  drug-free.  Stanley  had  a  lot  of  scll- 
control,  to  put  it  mildly  a  hundredfold. 

He  had  small  line  hands  that  he  sel- 
dom used  when  he  talked,  with  slender 

VANITY     FAIR 


[\  ■  e       to  repose, 
.  often  in  ins  beard,  01 
.1  compulsive  adjust- 
in  idd  habitual  gesture,  a 
:  inj  movement  of  the  arm,  indi- 
1    low  rent  real  estate  of  the 
Over  there,  where  we  don't  want 
He  had  small  feet,  rather  dainty, 
and  thej   moved  him  along  very  quickly 
and  smoothly.  When  1  saw  him  on  a  set 
alter  years  of  only  seeing   him   in   his 
house,  I  was  amazed  at  how  fast  he 
moved,  how  light  he  was,  darting  around 
the  crew  and  cameras  like  one  of  the  Sug- 
ar Rays,  grace  and  purpose  in  motion. 

He  was  totally  contained  physically, 
but  everything  else  about  him,  all  the  ac- 
tion going  on  behind  the  forehead,  was 
in  constant  play,  and  it  showed— black 
beard  and  black  hair  horseshoeing  back 
from  his  high  brow  to  the  crown  of  his 
head;  he  looked  like  he  took  care  of  his 
teeth;  and  although  his  mouth  wasn't 
particularly  sensual,  he  had  an  interest- 
ing repertoire  of  smiles,  expressing  a 
wide  range  of  thought  and  irony  and 
amusement. 

As  for  his  famous  eyes,  described  as 
dark,  focused,  and  piercing,  he  looked  out 
from  a  perceptibly  deep  place,  and  the 
look  went  far  inside  you,  if  you  were  what 
he  happened  to  be  looking  at.  Only  ex- 
tremely startled  people  ever  get  their  eyes 
open  that  wide.  I  know  that  quite  a  few 
people,  mostly  actors,  have  unraveled  when 
they  got  caught  in  Stanley's  beams,  even 
though  there  was  rarely  much  anger  in 
them.  Stanley's  look  was  just  so  deliber- 
ate, as  cool  as  functioning  intelligence  it- 
self, demanding  satisfaction,  or  resolution, 
some  kind  of  answer  to  some  kind  of 
problem  before  the  next  problem  arose, 
which  it  would.  Life  was  problem  solving, 
and  to  solve  a  problem  you  have  to  see 
the  problem.  The  eyebrows,  especially  when 
arched,  were  the  coup  de  grace. 

A  fter  I  moved  back  to 

/^k  America  in   1991,  the 

/  ^k  calls  fell  off  a  bit  to 

^L  something  like  once  a 

^fc  month.    Usually    he'd 

/  ^L        open  with  "Now,  Mi- 

I—         _^k» chael,  don't  ask  me 

anything  about  what  I'm  doing,  O.K.?"  I 
knew,  but  not  from  him,  that  he'd  op- 
tioned the  rights  to  a  book  I'd  had  sent  to 
him  in  bound  galleys,  a  possible  way  to 
make  a  two-hour  Holocaust  film,  Louis 
Begley's  Wartime  Lies,  which  Stanley 
adapted  and  called  Aryan  Papers;  I  heard 
he'd  talked  to  Julia  Roberts  and  Uma 
Thurman  about  it.  He'd  also  been  work- 
ing with  Brian  Aldiss  and  a  couple  of 


Killers  Kiss**     ■■■•- 
is  a  strange  ending, 

a  painful  travesty 
>f  a  happy  ending— the  kind 

of  touch  that 

would  come  to  be  called 

Kubrickian. 


VANITY     FAIR 


:  I 


A  STAR  IS  BORN 


Kubrick  in  1954 

with  Irene  Kane,  directing 

Killer's  Kiss,  his  first 

ajor  film,  which  he  made 

New  York  and  sold 

to  United  Artists. 


■HP'**- 


V 


^k 


If  von  had  anything  even  resembling  a  life,  time  a 


... ■   i  /     i    yber-agc  version 

•inoccl    ■    myth      which   he 

lie  thought  it  would  be 

.  to  make,  until  !ie  saw  Juras- 

md  started  calling  Steven  Spiel- 

50  minutes  to  talk  about  the 

technology  he  J  used.  I  heard  about  Tom 

and  N'    tie  Kidman  and  Eyes 

Wide  Shut    '     n  about  three  years  ago 

he  called 

"H  .  Michael,  what  do  you  charge 
th        lays  for  a  wash  and  a  rinse?" 

tie  was  four  or  five  months  away  from 
shooting  Eyes  Wide  Shut,  with  a  script 
he'd  written  with  Frederic  Raphael.  The 
story  was  set  in  New  York  in  the  90s,  and 
he  felt  it  needed  "a  little  colloquializing." 

"You  know,  like,  when  someone  says 
'Hello'  it  should  read  'Hi.'  [Laughing.]  It 
needs  your  ear,  Michael.  It's  perfect  for 
you." 

"How  long?" 

"At  the  very  most,  two  weeks.  But  it 
isn't  about  how  long.  It's  about  the  mag- 
ic." He  was  laughing,  but  he  meant  it. 

Naturally,  he  wouldn't  send  the  script 
he  wanted  "colloquialized"  to  me  to  read. 
I'd  have  to  go  to  England  and  read  it  in 
his  house,  and  once  you  walked  in  that 
door,  it  wasn't  always  so  easy  to  walk  out 
again.  I  didn't  want  to  leave  my  family  or 
my  work  and  get  into  that  kind  of  in- 
volvement with  him  again  without  some 
assurances.  I  said  I'd  do  it  only  as  a 
member  of  the  Writers  Guild,  and  that 
he'd  definitely  have  to  talk  to  my  agent, 
Sam  Cohn,  at  ICM.  I  told  him  that  Sam 
was  extremely  intelligent  and  discreet, 
and  besides,  this  was  a  Tom  Cruise  mov- 
ie, and  I  felt  that  agents  were  appropri- 
ate, even  required.  I  knew  he'd  never  call 
Sam,  and  he  never  did.  He  wanted  this 
to  be  between  us,  for  a  complex  of  rea- 
sons involving  money  and  secrecy,  affec- 
tion and  control,  respect  and  pathology 
and  old  times'  sake.  Stanley  tried  over 
the  next  few  weeks  to  get  me  to  change 
my  mind,  just  drop  everything  and  come 
over,  but  I  couldn't.  When  I  think  of  all 
the  ways  he  had  of  getting  people  to  do 
what  he  wanted  them  to  do,  and  of  how 
much  I  liked  him,  I  surprised  myself. 

"Come  on,  Michael,"  he  said,  "it'll  be 
fun." 

And  that  was  the  problem.  If  you  had 
anything  even  resembling  a  life,  time  and 
money  and  Stanley's  will  could  be  a  dead- 
ly infusion.  I  think  I  hurt  his  feelings.  Over 
the  next  two  and  a  half  years,  as  I  read 
about  the  ever  expanding  shooting  sched- 
ule, I  pictured  myself  chained  to  a  table 
in  his  house,  endlessly  washing  and  rins- 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


ing  for  laughs  and  minimum  wage,  stren- 
uous unprotected  intercourse,  and  I  had 
no  regrets.  Now,  of  course,  I  have  a  few. 

Tcan  hear  my  previous  agent  now 
all  the  way  from  1983,  when  he'd 
just  received  Stanley's  appalling 
offer  for  my  writing  services  on 
Full  Metal  Jacket.  Rendered  al- 
most inarticulate  by  representa- 
tional indignation,  he  taunted, 
"Little  Stanley  Kubrick  wants  his  Bar  Mitz- 
vah  money"  (a  Jewish  man  talking  to  a 
Jewish  man  about  another  Jewish  man), 
adding,  "And  it  isn't  even  his  money!, "  ob- 
viously impressed,  as  we  all  were,  by  the 
nerve  of  the  guy. 

Stanley  was  a  good  friend,  and  wonder- 
ful to  work  with,  but  he  was  a  terrible 
man  to  do  business  with,  terrible.  His 
cheapness  was  proverbial,  and  it's  true 
that  in  the  matter  of  deal-making,  whether 
it  was  his  money  or  Warner  Bros.'  mon- 
ey, it  flowed  down  slow  and  thin,  and 
sometimes  not  at  all,  unless  you  were  a 
necessary  star,  and  even  then:  it  bugged 
him  for  years  that  Jack  Nicholson  made 
more  money  from  The  Shining  than  he 
did.  If,  I  feel  I  should  add,  Nicholson 
really  did. 

Stanley's  money  pathology  was  one  of 
the  most  amazing  behavioral  phenomena 
I've  ever  witnessed.  In  spite  of  the  care 
he  took,  and  the  tremendous  price  he 
paid,  to  distance  himself  in  all  ways  from 
the  brutal,  greedy  men  who  ran  Holly- 
wood, a  piece  of  him  was  always  heart 
to  heart  with  them,  elective  affinity,  and 
he  would  sometimes  use  their  methods. 
It's  possible  that  a  few  of  Stanley's  ships 
sailed  under  Liberian  registration,  that 
his  word  was  not  necessarily  his  bond; 
and  it's  true,  if  you  were  only  in  it  for 
the  money,  I  can  see  where  you  would 
feel  undercompensated,  some  have  said 
ripped  off. 

Stanley  was  the  Big  Fisherman.  He 
played  everybody  like  a  fish,  but  all  dif- 
ferent fish,  from  the  majestic  salmon  to 
the  great  white  shark,  from  the  agile 
trout  to  the  sluggish  mudfish,  each  to  be 
played  in  its  particular  way  according  to 
the  speed  of  the  current  and  the  fighting 
capacity  of  his  adversary,  and  obviously 
his  desire  and  even  need  for  the  fish. 
Sometimes  there  was  just  more  fight  than 
play,  and  he'd  cut  bait,  but  much  more 
often  there  were  the  ones  who  couldn't 
wait  to  jump  right  into  his  boat  and 
knock  themselves  out,  because  after  all 
he  was  Stanley  Kubrick. 

And  he  knew  it,  had  every  reason  to 


know  it.  It  really  was  Stanley's  feeling  th 
it  was  a  privilege  to  be  working  with  hii 
and  it  wasn't  remotely  the  way  it  sounc 
it  was  a  reality  that  existed  far  beyoi 
any  question  of  arrogance  or  humility 
agreed  with  it  then,  and  nothing  ever  ha 
pened  to  make  me  feel  any  different.  Sti 
it  made  him  happy,  knowing  that  I  wou 
never  make  more  than  the  lamest  pro  fc 
ma  difficulties  over  what  he  loved  to  c; 
"emoluments."  Probably  somewhere 
pitied  me  for  being  so  careless  with  n 
"price,"  for  offering  him  my  soft  whi 
throat  like  that,  knowing  as  I  did  that  1 
would  never  find  it  on  his  pathologic 
screen  not  to  take  advantage  of  it. 

"Gee,  Michael,  you're  such  a  pure  gu; 
almost  drooling  with  sarcasm. 

"Are  you  calling  me  a  schmuck,  Sta 
ley?"  And  my  agent's  words  would  p( 
into  my  head. 

Stanley  hadn't  really  been  Bar  Mit 
vahed.  He  was  barely  making  it  in  scho' 
he  couldn't  do  junior-high  English,  1 
alone  Hebrew,  and  besides,  Dr.  and  M 
Kubrick  weren't  very  religious,  and  anj 
way,  Stanley  didn't  want  to.  He  was  n 
what  anybody  would  have  called  wi 
rounded.  From  the  day  he  entered  gra< 
school  in  1934,  his  attendance  record  h; 
been  a  mysterious  tissue  of  serial  and  su 
tained  absences,  his  discipline  nonexistei 
or  at  least  nonapparent,  his  grades  shod 
ing.  He'd  received  Unsatisfactory  on  "Worl 
and  Plays  Well  with  Others,"  "Respec 
Rights  of  Others,"  and,  inevitably,  "Pe 
sonality."  He  did  all  right  in  physics,  bi 
he  graduated  from  high  school  with  a  7 
average,  and  college  was  out  of  the  que 
tion.  At  17  he  was  already  working  as 
freelance  photographer  for  Look  magazin 
and  he  joined  the  staff,  and  he  played 
lot  of  chess,  and  read  a  lot  of  books,  an 
otherwise  arranged  for  his  own  higher  e 
ucation,  as  all  smart  people  do. 

Stanley  always  seemed  supernaturall 
youthful  to  his  friends.  His  voice  didn 
age  over  the  almost  20  years  that  I  kne\ 
him.  He  had  a  disarming  way  of  "leaver 
ing"  serious  discourse  with  low  adolescer 
humor,  smutty  actually,  sophomoric,  b 
which  I  mean  a  sophomore  in  high  schoo 
(Think  of  Lolita,  with  its  cherry-pie,  cavitj 
filling,  and  limp-noodle  jokes,  so  blatantl 
smutty,  without  shame,  subversive,  whicl 
was  the  idea.  He'd  set  the  lyric-eroti 
Nabokovian  tone  and  captured  an  esseno 
of  the  novel  in  the  opening  credit  se 
quence,  the  tender  and  meticulous  paint 
ing  of  Lolita's  toes,  and  then  begun  th 
comedy.  What  a  fabulous  shiny  mora 
barometer  that  movie  looked  like  in  1962 


AUGUST     199 


Dney  and  Stanleys  will  could  be  a  deadly  infusion. 


i-  en  it  was  new,  and  how  we  loved  which 
y  we  thought  the  wind  was  going  to 
i  tw.)  Everybody  brings  his  adolescence 
ward  through  life  with  him,  but  Stan- 
's adolescence  was  like  a  spring,  not 
;essarily  rising  pure,  but  always  fresh, 
d  refreshing,  and  touching,  because 
u'd  get  a  glimpse  at  times  of  someone 
e  Little  Stanley  in  there,  an  awesomely 
elligent  teenager  in  a  lot  of  pain  keeping 
.  courage  up.  Sometimes  I  imagined  that 
ould  see  his  actual  adolescence  in  all  its 
vious  complexity. 

In  Vincent  LoBrutto's  biography  Stanley 
ibrick.  there's  a  photograph  of  this  so- 
tlly  challenged,  academically  reviled  phe- 
im,  taken  when  he  was  12  or  13,  around 
;  time  he  would  have  been  Bar  Mitz- 
hed,  if  he'd  been  Bar  Mitzvahed,  like  a 
>rmal  person.  As  a  piece  of  evidence  in 
me  kind  of  Citizen  Kane  scavenger  hunt 
establish  the  character  of  a  legend,  it's 
invincing  in  suggesting  how  this  possibly 
veeb-like  little  Jewish  kid  from  the  Bronx 
me  to  identify  so  intimately  yet  so  ap- 
opriately  with  Napoleon. 
It's  as  striking  and  unsettling  as  pho- 
graphs  he  used  later  in  his  movies:  the 
;e  Mr.  Haze  in  Lolita,  "the  soul  of  in- 
pity,"  whose  mean,  calculating  eyes  look 
iwn  from  his  widow's  bedroom  wall  (his 
hes  are  displayed  on  the  bureau)  upon 
i  sexual  train-wreck-waiting-to-happen,  or 
ck  Torrance  in  Tire  Shining,  who  has  "al- 
lys  been  the  caretaker"  at  the  Overlook, 
liling  like  One  Possessed  in  a  picture  on 
i  hotel  wall  taken  a  generation  before  he 
is  born.  Only  just  pubescent  and  already 
nperamentally  if  not  yet  tactically  be- 
nd the  possibility  of  compromise;  secre- 
e  but  frank,  focused,  willful,  serious  and 
riously  amused,  not  looking  at  you  so 
iich  as  past  you,  at  what  I'd  be  reluctant 
say.  I  would  call  it  a  picture  of  a  very 
werful  boy,  a  handful  (as  I'm  sure  some- 
e  in  the  house  must  have  called  him  at 
ist  once),  maybe  not  certain  of  what  he 
ints  but  unusually  clear  about  what  he 
esn't  want,  and  won't  stand  still  for;  very 
ined  features,  delicate  but  tough,  Stanley 
the  trembling  lip  of  manhood,  a  pre- 
sn  face  enveloping  an  ancient  soul,  like 
's  already  seen  them  come  and  seen 
:m  go,  and  so  what? 
(This  photograph  could  also  suggest  why, 
len  he  came  to  make  his  "youth  movie," 
tual  youth  was  completely  absent  from 
A  Clockwork  Orange  was  released  in 
71  to  unprecedented  controversy,  odium 
:n,  revealing  presumptions  in  the  critical 
ommunity"  about  the  high  order  of  our 
-called  civilization  that  Stanley  was  af- 

I  G  U  ST     19  9  9 


fronting  here,  a  condemnation  of  the  ambi- 
guity that  has  always  been  the  sign  of  the 
first-rate.  I  think  he  scared  himself  with 
that  one,  which  speaks  well  for  any  artist, 
art  and  life  riding  so  close  together  and  out 
of  control  here  that  there  was  no  time  for 
one  to  imitate  the  other,  it  was  pouring 
from  the  same  fount.  The  copycat  beatings 
and  killings  started  as  soon  as  it  was  shown 
in  England,  and  he  permanently  withdrew 
it  from  release  there.  Right-minded  people 
couldn't  believe  that  he  was  aware  of  what 
a  repellent  film  he'd  made,  because  if  he'd 
been  aware  he  could  never  have  made  it. 
But  certainly  he  was  aware,  and  perfectly 
sincere;  he  didn't  care  that  it  was  repel- 
lent—it was  meant  to  be  repellent— as  long 
as  it  was  beautiful.) 

He  disliked  the  usual  references  to  his 
having  been  a  "chess  hustler"  in  his  Green- 
wich Village  days,  as  though  this  impugned 
the  gravity  and  beauty  of  the  exercise,  the 
suggestion  that  his  game  wasn't  pour  le  sport 
or,  more  correctly,  pour  I'art.  To  win  the 
game  was  important,  to  win  the  money 
was  irresistible,  but  it  was  nothing  com- 
pared with  his  game,  with  the  searching, 
endless  action  of  working  on  his  game.  But 
of  course  he  was  hustling,  he  was  always 
hustling;  as  he  grew  older  and  moved  be- 
yond still  photography,  chess  became  mov- 
ies, and  movies  became  chess  by  other 
means.  I  doubt  that  he  ever  thought  of 
chess  as  just  a  game,  or  even  as  a  game  at 
all.  I  do  imagine  that  a  lot  of  people  sitting 
across  the  board  from  him  got  melted,  fried, 
and  fragmented  when  Stanley  let  that  cool 
ray  come  streaming  down  out  of  his  eyes- 
talk  about  penetrating  looks  and  piercing 
intelligence;  here  they'd  sat  down  to  a  nice 
game  of  chess,  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  was 
doing  the  thinking  for  both  of  them. 

A  high-school  friend,  the  director  Alex- 
ander Singer,  went  with  Stanley  to,  see 
Eisenstein's  Alexander  Nevsky  around  this 
time.  "And  we  hear  Prokofiev's  score  for 
the  battle  on  the  ice  and  Stanley  never 
gets  over  that.  He  bought  a  record  of  it 
and  . . .  played  it  over  and  over  and  over 
again,"  until  his  kid  sister  couldn't  stand  it 
anymore  and  broke  it.  "I  think  the  word 
'obsessive'  is  not  unfair." 

It's  fair  only  as  far  as  it  goes;  just  as  he 
was  multidisciplined,  he  was  variously  ob- 
sessive, and  not  fastidious  about  picking  up 
information,  and  not  afraid  of  whatever  the 
information  might  be.  Nobody  who  really 
thinks  he's  smarter  than  everyone  else 
could  ask  as  many  questions  as  he  always 
did.  He  was  beating  the  patzers  in  the 
park,  working  for  Look  magazine,  some- 
times using  a  series  of  still  photos  to  tell  a 


story,  sometimes  taking  pictures  of  people 
like  Dwight  Eisenhower  and  George  Grosz, 
Montgomery  Clift,  Frank  Sinatra  and  Joe 
DiMaggio  (and,  I'm  sure,  keeping  his  eyes 
and  ears  open),  reading  10  or  20  books  a 
week,  and  trying  to  see  every  movie  ever 
made.  There  was  definitely  such  a  thing  as 
a  bad  movie,  but  there  was  no  movie  not 
worth  seeing.  As  a  kid  he'd  been  part  of 
the  neighborhood  multitude  that  poured 
ritually,  communally,  in  and  out  of  Loew's 
Paradise  and  the  RKO  Fordham  two  or 
three  times  a  week,  and  now  he  haunted 
the  Museum  of  Modern  Art  and  the  few 
foreign-film  revival  houses,  the  very  under- 
ground Cinema  16,  and  the  triple-feature 
houses  along  42nd  Street. 

Reportedly  he  was  already  careless, 
even  reckless,  in  his  appearance,  mixing 
his  plaids  in  wild  shirt,  jacket  and  necktie 
combinations  never  seen  on  the  street  be- 
fore, disreputable  trousers,  way-out  acci- 
dental hairdos.  He  started  infiltrating  what- 
ever film  facilities  were  in  the  city  in  those 
days,  hanging  around  cutting  rooms,  labs, 
equipment  stores,  asking  questions:  How 
do  you  do  that?  and  WJiat  would  happen  if 
you  did  this  instead?  and  How  much  do  you 
think  it  would  cost  if  . . .  ?  He  was  jazz- 
mad,  and  went  to  the  clubs,  and  a  Yan- 
kees fan,  so  he  went  to  the  ball  games  too, 
all  of  this  in  New  York  in  the  late  40s  and 
early  50s,  a  smart,  spacey,  wide-awake  kid 
like  that,  it's  no  wonder  he  was  such  a 
hipster,  a  40s-bred,  50s-minted,  tough- 
minded,  existential,  highly  evolved  classic 
hipster.  His  view  and  his  temperament 
were  much  closer  to  Lenny  Bruce's  than 
to  any  other  director's,  and  this  was  not 
merely  a  recurring  aspect  of  his.  He  had 
lots  of  modes  and  aspects,  but  Stanley  was 
a  hipster  all  the  time. 

Just  look  at  the  credits  of 
Killer's  Kiss  to  see  what  the 
27-year-old  director  thought 
of  himself  even  then.  Story 
By— no  screenplay  credit  is 
given— Produced  By,  and  Ed- 
ited, Photographed  and  Di- 
rected By  Stanley  Kubrick.  But  get  a  load 
of  the  film  too.  He  made  it  under  severe 
time  and  money  limitations,  which  he 
addressed  like  a  soldier,  and  not  a  boy 
soldier  either,  making  virtues  out  of  limi- 
tations, so  that  even  though  it's  only  67 
minutes  long  it's  not  really  a  small  movie. 
You  can  see  in  10  seconds  how  infatuated 
he  was  with  the  medium,  and  how  in- 
credibly adept,  every  scene  packed  with 
ideas,  ambition,  with  tribute,  hommage, 
even  the  odd  tributary  theft  (what  he 

VANITY     FAIR      I 


NLEY'S  WORLD 


kwise  from  top  left:  Kubrick  directing 
1:  A  Space  Odyssey;  Kubrick  filming 
>reak-in  scene  for  A  Clockwork  Orange; 
rick  photographed  by  Jane  Bovingdon 
el  at  Pinewood  Studios  in  Iver  Heath, 
land,  1997;  Ryan  O'Neal  and 
isa  Berenson  in  Barry  Lyndon,  1975; 
rick  overseeing  George  C.  Scott  and 
y  Reed  in  Dr.  Strangelove;  Kubrick 
rving  a  game  of  chess  between  Kola 
riani  and  Sterling  Hayden  on  the  set  of 
Killing,  1955;  Nicole  Kidman  and 
Cruise  in  Eyes  Wide  Shut,  1999. 


started  calling  "souveniring"  later,  when 
he  began  picking  up  on  the  Vietnam 
grunt  vernacular),  mostly  from  the  Euro- 
peans who  had  given  him  so  much  plea- 
sure and  inspiration:  Fritz  Lang,  G.  W. 
Pabst,  Vsevelod  Pudovkin,  Jean  Renoir, 
Vittorio  De  Sica,  and,  always,  Max  Ophuls, 
with  that  fluent,  rapturous,  delirious  cam- 
era of  his.  It  also  has  a  strange  ending,  a 
painful  travesty  of  a  happy  ending,  where 
the  couple  go  off  together  even  though 
we've  seen  both  of  them  cravenly  betray 
and  desert  each  other  to  save  their  own 
lives.  It's  the  kind  of  touch  that  would 
come  to  be  called  Kubrickian. 


I] 


Money  well  timed  and  properly  applied 
can  accomplish  anything. 

—Thackeray  and/or  Kubrick, 
Barry  Lyndon. 

e  were  driving 
toward  Beck- 
ton,  an  aban- 
doned gas- 
works in  far 
East  London, 
near  the  Lon- 
don docks.  It  was  a  late  masterpiece  of  the 
19th-century  Imperial  Industrial  Style,  and 
Stanley  had  arranged  to  blow  it  up  for  his 
Vietnam  film,  let  the  pieces  fall  exactly 
where  he  wanted  them  to  fall,  even  if  it 
meant  countermanding  the  laws  of  physics, 
and  re-create  Hue,  which  it  already  uncan- 
nily resembled,  built  about  the  same  time 
as  the  industrial  district  of  the  Vietnamese 
city,  and  out  of  the  same  grand,  doomed 
cultural  assumptions.  (He  never  got  the 
thin  light  of  the  Southeast  England  skies  to 
match  the  opulent  light  over  Vietnam,  but 
whatever  could  be  dressed  was  dressed  a  la 
Kubrick,  Stanley  studying  photographs  of 
palm  trees  that  he'd  had  taken  in  Spain,  in- 
dividually choosing  from  the  thousands  of 
trees  which  ones  he  wanted  in  his  movie. 
Very  meticulous  guy,  Stanley.) 

Beckton  (or  Bee  Phu,  as  it  was  called  af- 
ter its  Vietnamization)  was  about  40  miles 
from  his  house.  He  drove  us,  and  he  drove 
the  white  Porsche  that  he  supposedly  used 
only  to  tool  around  his  driveway  in.  He 
handled  the  stick  with  great  proficiency. 
He  drove  at  speeds  above  60,  and  neither 
of  us  wore  a  crash  helmet.  It  may  be  true, 
as  has  been  reported  so  many  times,  and 
is  in  all  the  books  about  him,  that  he 
wouldn't  let  anybody  driving  him  go  above 
35,  and  would  not  get  in  a  car  without  a 
helmet.  It's  not  unbelievable.  His  whole 
hard  drive  was  up  there;  it  would  only  be 
prudent  to  protect  it,  to  say  the  least.  Maybe 


by  the  time  I  knew  him  he'd  grown'reckless. 

As  we  approached  the  gasworks,  Stan- 
ley pointed  to  a  row  of  small,  grimy  houses 
across  the  road  from  the  plant. 

"I'll  bet  they  were  owned  by  the  com- 
pany," he  said.  "They'd  rent  them  out  to 
their  laborers  and  their  families.  They  had 
them  coming  and  going.  It  reminds  me  of 
the  old  studio  system." 

I  looked  over  at  them.  They  were  so 
marginal,  so  dark. 

"I  wonder  who  lives  in  them  now." 

"Poor  people,"  Stanley  said. 

tanley  liked  to  quote  the 
songwriter  Sammy  Cahn, 
who  was  asked  in  an  inter- 
view which  came  first,  the 
words  or  the  music.  "The 
check,"  Sammy  said.  (Stan- 
ley called  him  "Sammy."  He 
had  never  met  him,  but  they  were  in  the 
same  business.) 

He'd  say  that  when  he  was  younger  and 
people  used  to  ask  him  why  he  became  a 
movie  director,  he'd  tell  them,  Because  the 
pay  was  good.  He  was  excited  by  the  roar 
of  the  propellers  as  big  money  took  off 
and  went  flying  through  the  system,  circu- 
lating and  separating  into  fewer  and  larger 
pockets,  even  if  those  pockets  were  not  al- 
ways his  own;  he  just  liked  knowing  that 
it  was  going  on  out  there.  He  had  great 
respect  for  the  box  office,  if  not  the  great- 
est respect,  and  found  something  to  ad- 
mire in  even  the  most  vile  movie  once  it 
passed  a  hundred  million.  For  him,  that 
kind  of  success  always  produced  some 
kind  of  wonderful/horrible  aura,  Vox  Po- 
puli,  a  reflection  of  a  meaningful  fragment 
of  the  culture  that  he  contemplated  so  ar- 
dently. Stanley  never  was  one  of  those 
middle-class  American  Jewish  men  who 
are  afraid  of  success. 

He  loved  the  biz,  the  industry,  the  action 
he  observed  day  and  night  from  his  bridge; 
all  those  actors  and  directors  and  projects, 
all  the  dumb  energy  endlessly  turning  over 
in  the  studios  and  the  PR.  that  came  with 
each  new  product;  he  loved  being  a  part  of 
it  from  his  amazing  remove,  and  in  terms 
of  being  a  player,  he  didn't  see  himself  as 
better  or  worse,  higher  or  lower,  than  any  of 
them,  all  of  them  in  play  together,  playing 
toward  commerce  and  art,  big  expensive 
art  and  works  of  art  for  the  cash  register 
or,  as  I've  sometimes  thought  in  his  case, 
art  films  with  blockbuster  pretensions. 

He  wasn't  exactly  Show  People,  but  he 
knew  a  lot  about  the  procedures  and  pro- 
tocols: if  I  mentioned  some  moment  I'd 
liked  in  one  of  his  films,  he'd  say,  "Show- 
manship, Michael,"  with  more  irony  and 
levels  of  irony  than  you  can  imagine,  with 


VANITY     FAIR 


ii   and   in.  ction,  and 

i  ■  thai  Stanley  wasn't 
bui     don't  think  that  juil 
ive  retentive  he  was 
i   even  any  more  ego- 
than  anybody  else  in  the  movies. 
And  1  suppose  that  he  was  "selfish," 
which  doesn'l  exactly  make  him  a  freak  in 
the  Directors  Guild  (or  the  Writers  Guild 
either),  nor  was  his  particular  selfishness 
uncharacteristic  of  artists  in  general,  espe- 
cially when  they've  acquired  the  reputa- 
tion for  genius.  A  powerful  vision  can  be 
very  fragile  while   it's  still  only  in  the 
mind,  and  people  have  gone  to  extraordi- 
nary lengths  to  protect  it.  He  didn't  think 
he  was  the  only  person  in  the  world,  or 
the  only  director,  or  even  the  only  great 
director.  I  just  think  that  he  thought  he 
was  the  greatest  director,  although  he  nev- 
er said  so  in  so  many  words. 


Ill 


Just  because  you  like  my  work  doesn't 
menu  that  I  owe  you  anything. 

—Bob  Dylan 

Tt's  been  said  by  critics  that  he 
was  misogynistic,  although  he 
photographed  some  women  beau- 
tifully: Jean  Simmons  in  Sparta- 
cus,  Sue  Lyon  in  Lolita,  Marisa 
Berenson  in  Barry  Lyndon,  Su- 
sanne  Christian  in  Paths  of  Glory, 
and,  judging  from  the  90-second  trailer  for 
Eyes  Wide  Shut,  Nicole  Kidman.  There 
are  some  wonderful  women  in  Stanley's 
movies,  and  some  of  them  he  had  enough 
respect  for  that  he  made  them  as  danger- 
ous as  any  of  the  men.  And  they  say  he 
couldn't  make  love  stories,  when  what  they 
mean  is  he  couldn't  make  happy  love  sto- 
ries, since  there's  the  famously  difficult 
love  of  Humbert  and  Lo  in  Lolita,  and 
Redmond  Barry's  young  love  for  his  cous- 
in Nora  in  Barry  Lyndon.  She  marries  a 
pompous,  cowardly,  ugly  Englishman  for 
her  convenience  and  the  convenience  of 
her  family,  turning  Redmond  into  a  fatally 
hard  case.  His  films  were  certainly  unro- 
mantic,  possibly  even  anti-romantic. 

I  know  from  dozens  of  articles  and  a 
few  too  many  books  that  Stanley  was  con- 
sidered cold,  although  this  would  have  to 
be  among  people  who  never  knew  him. 
This  perception  devolved  into  cant  among 
a  lot  of  critics,  who  called  his  work  sterile, 
particularly  in  the  New  York  circle  (what 
an  awful  time  liberals  have  had  with  his 
movies;  what  convolutions  of  reason  and 
belief,  what  sad  denials  of  pleasure),  in- 
cluding some  of  the  best,  even  Anthony 

I     VANITY     FAIR 


Lane  of  The  Mew  Yorker.  Writing  the  week 
aftei  Stanley's  death  about  Killer's  Kiss,  he 
says.  "Because  Kubrick  was  still  learning, 
and  was  hobbled  by  a  tight  budget,  he 
couldn't  help  stumbling  up  against  life;  the 
story  of  his  subsequent  career  has  been 
the  slow  and  maniacal  banishment  of  that 
young  man's  riskiness,  to  the  point  where 
feelings,  like  rainfall,  can  be  measured  by 
the  inch."  So  how  many  inches  for  Char- 
lotte Haze's  hunger  and  confusion,  or  for 
Humbert's  unending  torture,  in  Lolita'! 
How  many  for  the  loneliness  verging  on 
desperation  of  a  space  that's  empty  be- 
yond conception,  and  even  emptier  for  the 
presence  of  a  few  humans,  in  2001:  A 
Space  Odyssey?  How  many  for  Lady  Lyn- 
don's humiliation  and  despair,  and  for  all 
of  Barry's  disappointments,  however  well 
earned,  or  for  the  grief  they  attempt  to 
share  at  the  death  of  their  child,  in  Barry 
Lyndon?  What  about  the  living  hell  of 
Jack's  madness/possession  in  Tlie  Shining, 
or  the  truly  unbearable  suffering  of  Marine 
recruit  Private  Pyle  in  Full  Metal  Jacket? 
Not  even  Robert  Bresson  showed  more 
suffering  in  his  films.  Merciless  is  not  the 
same  as  pitiless.  In  2001,  even  the  last 
words  of  a  dying,  sexually  ambivalent  com- 
puter are  pitiful.  Worse,  to  some  unforgiv- 
able, even  vicious,  violent  Droogie  Alex  in 
A  Clockwork  Orange,  denatured  and  cast 
out  by  Em  and  Pee  and  the  unspeakable 
Joe  the  Lodger,  breaks  your  heart  as  he 
walks  along  the  river  clutching  his  life  in  a 
parcel,  and  it's  not  a  comfortable  feeling. 
As  Stanley  said  when  we  started  to  write 
Full  Metal  Jacket,  "Well,  Michael,  it  looks 
like  I'm  making  another  Who  Do  You 
Root  For  movie." 

Just  as  it  made  Stanley  happy 
to  know  that  all  was  well  in 
the  Emolumental  Universe, 
so  it  upset  and  offended  him 
to  hear  stories  of  profligacy 
among  members  of  the  in- 
dustry. This  wasn't  simply  a 
phobic  reaction  to  waste  and  folly,  it  was 
a  response  to  energy  and  intelligence  that 
weren't  burning  like  his  own,  furious  and 
clean.  I  told  him  about  a  dinner  I'd  had  a 
few  nights  before  with  a  director,  a  man 
whose  history  had  set  new  industry  stan- 
dards for  wretched  excess,  and  there  he 
was  again,  committing  further  hubris  in  a 
London  restaurant,  leaving  £300  worth  of 
wine  that  had  been  ordered  and  opened 
sitting  untouched  on  the  table  when  we 
left.  Stanley  shook  his  head  sadly.  "You 
see,  Michael.  These  guys  don't  know  how 
to  live  like  monks." 

I  have  to  apologize  for  repeating  this  sto- 
ry, which  I've  told  before,  because  I  don't 


know  how  to  describe  Stanley  lo  you  wi 
out  it.  I'd  already  begun  to  think  of  h 
that  way  before  he  said  it.  half  joking  a 
perfectly  serious.  His  distance  from  peop 
his  "impersonality,"  were  always  attribut 
lo  his  supposed  neuroses,  his  "misanth: 
py,"  but  I  think  they  were  more  probal 
signs  of  his  purity.  He  lived  a  simple  (o 
er)  life,  and  a  largely  devotional  one, 
though  admittedly  secular.  Childwick  Bu 
was  as  much  a  studio  as  a  home,  a  dou 
studio  actually,  one  for  him  and  his  movi 
and  one  for  his  wife,  Christiane,  and 
painting.  It  was  a  space  of  perpetual  ci 
ative  activity.  He  was  thought  by  the  pre: 
and  so  by  the  public,  to  be  sequester 
there,  lurking,  scheming,  like  Howa 
Hughes  or  Dr.  Mabuse  or  the  Wizard 
Oz,  depending  on  which  paper  you  rea 
This  is  because  none  of  them  could  ev 
imagine  living  the  kind  of  life  Stanley  live 
Anyway,  he  wasn't  misanthropic,  he  was 
reverent;  and  come  to  think  of  it,  he  was 
irreverent  either. 

They  say  he  had  no  personal  life,  b 
that's  ridiculous.  It  would  be  more  corre 
to  say  that  he  had  no  professional  li 
since  everything  he  did  was  persona 
done;  every  move  and  every  call  he  mac 
every  impulse  he  expressed,  was  utter 
personal,  devoted  to  the  making  of  h 
movies,  which  were  all  personal.  In  ten 
of  worldly  activity,  since  you'd  have 
look  to  the  spiritual  sector  to  find  anythii 
like  it,  I  never  knew  anyone  who  cared 
much  and  so  completely  about  his  work 

When  we  first  met  I  told  him  seconc 
hand  stories  about  the  filming  of  Apocc 
lypse  Now,  and  what  a  tough  shoot  it  ha 
been.  "They're  all  tough,  Michael,"  he  sai( 
and  they  were,  at  least  the  way  he  did  i 
Yet  something  drew  people  to  it,  and  kej. 
them  at  it,  even  into  the  part  of  the  proces 
where  you  felt  like  you  were  a  slave,  to 
and  to  him,  like  he  and  his  movie  were  ii 
separable,  insatiable,  you  were  trapped  i 
it,  even  though  the  door  was  always  ope 
and  you  were  technically,  if  not  alway 
contractually,  free  to  walk  through  it 
any  time.  People  stayed,  holding  on  t 
whatever  piece  of  the  prevailing  obsessio 
was  going  around  at  the  moment,  drag 
ging  massive  blocks  nights  and  weekend 
and  holidays  to  build  another  one  of  Stai 
ley's  pyramids,  and  whether  cheerful  or  n 
sentful  didn't  matter  that  much  to  hirr 
although  he  preferred  cheerful. 

The  more  highly  paid  you  were,  or  th 
closer  to  the  actual  shooting,  the  mor 
enslaved  you  were  likely  to  be.  If  yoi 
were  right  there  on  the  set  with  film  ru 
ning,  the  pressure  could  be  amazing,  o 
so  I  was  convincingly  told  by  many  of  th 
cast  and  crew  of  con  i  iNini)  (in  page  i* 

AUGUST     199 


SWAN  SONG 

Kubrick  in  1997  with  Sydney  Pollack, 

the  director  and  actor,  on  the  set 

of  Eyes  Wide  Shut,  his  last  film, 

based  on  Arthur  Schnitzler's  1926 

"Dream  Novel."  Kubrick  died 

in  March  of  this  year,  immediately 

after  completing  the  film. 


^^^*g||£ 


s 


He  d  never 
talk  about  his  movies 

while  he  was 
making  them,  and  he 

didnt  like  talking 
about  them  afterward 

very  much. 


The  battle  between  gorgeous,  green-eyed    ^J 
Patricia  Duff  and  her  fourth  husband,  billionaire 

Ronald  Perelman,  for  custody  of  their  young  daughl 
has  played  for  over  a  year  as  one  of  New  York's  more  riveting  tabloid 
dramas.  Is  Duff  the  victim  of  a  powerful,  domineering  ex-husban 
Or  did  her  paranoia  and  deception  drive  Perelman  to  counterattack 
Tracing  the  45-year-old  Duff  s  gossip-laden  leaps  from 
marriage  to  marriage,  MARJORIE  WILLIAMS  profiles  a  modern 
femme  fatale,  from  her  Holly  Golightly  days  in  Washington,  D.C. 
to  her  Hollywood  reign  as  wife  of  studio  head  Mike  Medavoy, 
to  her  post-Perelman  landing  in  the  arms  of  another 
high-profile  protector,  Senator  Robert  Torricelli 


elcome  to  the  seventh  circle  of  litigation  hell:  a  cramped,  gloor 
courtroom  on  the  fifth  floor  of  the  Supreme  Court  building  i 
lower  Manhattan,  suffused  with  brown  even  on  a  brilliant  Ma 
afternoon.  Patricia  Duff  is  dressed  for  court  with  her  trademar 
simplicity:  a  tailored  navy  pantsuit,  a  simple  black  Prada  baj 
her  shiny  blond  hair  unstyled;  the  severity  of  it  all  makes  he 
slim  frame  look  tiny  in  the  high-ceilinged  room.  To  complete  th 
effect,  she  is  limping  toward  her  side  of  the  table  that  dominate 
the  well  of  the  courtroom,  her  left  foot  still  in  a  cast  from  ; 
spring-vacation  stumble. 

Justice  Eileen  Bransten  does  not  seem  especially  happy  U 
see  her.  "Man  magnet"  Duff,  as  the  New  York  Past's  "Page  Six" 
likes  to  call  her,  and  her  ex-husband  the  driven  billionaire 
Ronald  Perelman  are  now  nearing  their  third  year  of  litigation 
over  the  future  of  their  ibur-year-old  daughter.  And  quite  a  light 


AUGUST     199 


♦      f 


(Ol  RUM;  DISASIKR 

I'atricia  Dull  leaves  the 

Supreme  Court  building.  Manhattan. 

December  IS.  I ')')*.  during  the 

custody  battle  » i t li  Ronald  i'crclman. 

She  accuses  him  of  "systematic 

harassment"  in  an  effort  to  control  her. 

lie  says.     I  he  likelihood  of  any  man 

lii-iii'.:  in  a  position  to  control  I'atricia 

is  somewhat  less  than  zero." 


uce  the  courtroom  was 
h  |  ublic,  last  December,  al 

ome  '  War  of  the  Roses, 
they've  both  losi  sight  of  what 
s  someone  who  knows 
And  it  just  keeps  escalat- 
ing." P  ...  ini.in  has  steadily  upped  his 
demands  in  court,  criticized  Duff's  per- 
formanci  as  a  mother,  and  made  sure  the 
tabloids  got  word  of  a  court-appointed 
psychiatrist's  conclusion,  paraphrased  by 
Perelman's  lawyers,  that  Duff  "has  a  per- 
sonality disorder  with  paranoid,  narcis- 
sistic, passive-aggressive,  histrionic  and 
borderline  features"  and  that  she  is  "un- 
able to  distinguish  her  needs  from  those 
of  the  parties'  daughter." 

Duff,  in  her  own  filings,  has  raised  what 
she  calls  her  ex-husband's  "utterly  false 
and  hypocritical  piety,  his  womanizing,  his 
wayward  way  of  life,  his  unrelenting  puni- 
tive behavior  to  his  ex-wives,  his  children 
and  to  anyone  who  does  not  bend  to  his 
will,  and  his  systematic  harassment  of  me 
in  a  multitude  of  ways." 

"Frankly,"  she  says  in  an  interview, 
"considering  what  I've  gone  through,  how 
besieged  I've  been,  I  think  my  ability  to 
hold  up  and  keep  my  daughter  happy  and 
in  good  shape  is  pretty  extraordinary." 
The  entire  suit,  she  claims,  is  part  of  his 
vindictive  drive  to  control  her. 

"Hah!"  replies  Perelman.  "The  likeli- 
hood of  any  man  being  in  a  position  to  con- 
trol Patricia  is  somewhat  less  than  zero." 

The  case  is,  among  other  things,  an 
experiment  in  what  happens  when  a 
powerful  control  freak  collides  with  a 
woman  who  sometimes  seems  to  live  for 
the  transgression  of  boundaries.  It's  also 
a  rare  look  at  divorce  in  the  financial 
stratosphere,  where  parents  can  discuss 
with  straight  faces  whether  $36,000  is 
an  adequate  yearly  clothing  allowance 
for  a  four-year-old  but  cannot  get  along 
well  enough  to  make  sure  the  girl  has  a 
clean  outfit  to  wear  to  pre-school  on  the 
day  she  shifts  households,  where  the  tum- 
ble from  life  with  a  billionaire  to  life  as  a 
mere  millionaire  can  seem  like  the  world's 
most  precipitous  slide.  But  at  its  most  ar- 
resting, the  case  is  the  climactic  chapter 
in  the  45-year-old  Duff's  career  as  a 
femme  fatale. 

To  this  day's  dull  procedural  hearing, 
the  litigants'  notoriety  has  drawn  a  small 
knot  of  reporters  and  half  a  dozen  ac- 
tivists—from now,  from  the  National 
Coalition  for  Family  Justice,  from  Amicus 
for  Domestic  Justice— who  have  come  to 
murmur  their  support  for  Duff's  con- 
tention that  she  and  her  little  girl  are  the 
butterflies  being  broken  on  the  wheel  of 


Perelman's  wrath.  But  extensive  interviews 
and  a  reading  of  the  available  records  in- 
cluding police  reports  in  two  states  point 
to  a  much  more  complicated  conclusion: 
that  Patricia  Dull'  is  a  woman  so  intent  on 
seeing  herself  as  a  victim  that  she  may,  at 
last,  ensure  that  very  result. 

Even  before  the  Perel- 
man case  spiraled  out 
of  control,  the  four- 
times-married  Duff  was 
a  topic  of  fevered  gos- 
sip in  New  York,  Los 
Angeles,  and  Washing- 
ton, for  she  has  had  a 
colorful  career  in  each 
of  those  cities:  as  the  belle  of  Carter-era 
Washington  who,  in  the  brief  interval  be- 
tween two  early  marriages,  was  courted  by 
congressmen;  as  an  aspiring  actress  and 
then  political  doyenne  in  Hollywood, 
where,  after  marrying  studio  executive 
Mike  Medavoy,  she  made  herself  a  figure 
in  the  nexus  where  politicians  and  stars 
trade  cash  for  cachet;  and  then  in  New 
York,  where  she  arrived  in  1994  to  live 
with  Perelman,  already  pregnant  with  his 
child.  Since  her  split  from  Perelman,  she 
has  taken  up  with  New  Jersey  senator 
Robert  Torricelli,  an  up-and-coming  Dem- 
ocrat who  formerly  dated  Bianca  Jagger, 
and  who  was  recently  tagged  by  George 
magazine  as  one  of  the  10  biggest  publici- 
ty hounds  in  Washington. 

Careers  like  this  may  be  common  in 
Hollywood,  but  it  has  been  at  least  a  gen- 
eration since  Washington  or  New  York 
has  seen  a  woman  with  such  a  penchant 
for  the  high-profile  relationship.  New 
Yorker  media  critic  Hendrik  Hertzberg, 
who  has  known  Duff  since  the  Carter 
presidency,  muses  admiringly,  "If  Jackie 
O.  was  Elvis  and  Pamela  Harriman  was 
Jagger,  she'd  be,  what?  Tom  Petty?  Neil 
Young?" 

So  delectable  is  her  legend  that  when  I 
called  Warren  Beatty  for  an  interview,  and 
told  him  I  was  writing  about  Patricia  Duff, 
he  laughed.  "Congratulations!"  he  said. 

It  hasn't  softened  Duff's  notoriety— or 
the  tone  of  those  discussing  her— that  she 
is  a  staggeringly  beautiful  woman.  Pho- 
tographs don't  do  her  justice:  in  person 
she  is,  in  the  words  of  one  woman  who 
doesn't  even  like  her,  "uncannily  gor- 
geous." Her  wheaty  shoulder-length  hair  is 
pleasantly  tousled;  her  eyes  are  a  rare,  dis- 
concerting shade  of  green,  so  deep  as  to 
be  almost  olive.  The  impact  of  her  beauty 
is  completed  by  her  voice:  it  is  soft  and 
sandpapery— too  deep  to  be  kittenish,  but 
with  a  definite  help-me  hush. 

Beth  Dozoretz,  national  finance  chair 


of  the  Democratic  National  Committe 
recalls  that  on  her  first  meeting  with  Du 
"I  said,  'Excuse  me  for  staring  at  you,  b 
you're  so  beautiful.'  And  you  know,  she 
beautiful  in  a  disarming  way  it  doesr 
seem  like  it's  a  lot  of  effort." 

Men  in  Washington  still  recall  her  he 
day  as  a  political  staff  worker  and  soci 
ornament  among  the  Democrats  wh 
came  to  town  with  Jimmy  Carter.  "Sh 
was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  things 
had  ever  seen,  maybe  after  the  Gran 
Canyon,"  recalls  Washington  Post  colu 
nist  Richard  Cohen. 

Her  beauty  has  not  faded  over  tim 
Perelman  recalls,  of  the  encounter  in  la 
1992  that  sparked  his  relationship  wit 
Duff  that  "she  just  captivated  me— sh 
looked  in  my  eyes  and  captivated  me.  Sh 
can  be  the  single  most  charming  huma 
being  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Sh 

looks  at  you  with  those  eyes And  sh 

looks  great,  and  she  moves  great,  and  sh 
smells  great,  and  she  sounds  great.  And 
thought,  This  is  great!" 

Before  her  marriage  to  Perelman,  Duff 
high-water  mark  among  gossips  had  bee 
early  in  the  Clinton  administration,  afte 
she  and  Medavoy,  who  had  been  can 
paign  supporters,  took  their  turn  as  guest 
in  the  Lincoln  Bedroom.  Back  in  Lo 
Angeles,  Patricia  regaled  friends  wit 
stories  of  the  president's  solicitude;  th 
New  York  Post  reported  that  she  said  h 
was  (nudge,  nudge)  "one  full-service  pres 
ident."  She  denied  having  hinted  at  an 
thing  untoward.  But  the  gossip  alone  wa 
enough  to  end  her  easy  access  to  th 
president.  "The  president  was  quite  an 
gry  about  it,"  recalls  a  former  Clintoi 
staffer.  "And  then  she  was  kind  of  cu 
off.  She  stopped  getting  invited  to  se< 
him  in  LA She  just  seemed  danger 


ous  after  that." 


ost  people  doubt 
ed  that  she'd  actu 
ally  had  an  affai 
with  the  presi 
dent.  But  the  tall 
served  to  burnish 
the  myth  that  Duf 
has  worked  har( 
at  cultivating,  lib 
erally  polishing  the  duller  parts,  editing 
and  augmenting  the  less  glamorous  bits 
The  higher  she  has  risen,  the  more  carefu 
this  editing  process  has  become,  excising  < 
husband  here,  altering  a  chronology  there. 

But  if  Duff  has  lived  the  life  of 
femme  fatale,  she  lacks  the  flinty  self 
awareness  that  marks  the  genuine  article 
"For  someone  who's  an  insecure  persor 
to  start  with,  she's  chosen  a  very  chal 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


/ 


Bi 


N  BEHIND  THE  MAN 


Duff  with  then  Governor 

Bill  Clinton  in  Culver  City, 

California,  1992.  She  was  among 

his  earliest  Hollywood  supporters, 

but  gossip  about  a  subsequent 

stay  in  the  Lincoln  Bedroom  led 

<        to  her  estrangement  from 

the  White  House. 


>-.. 


roS 


'ess  a  cJ 


nier  chairman  of  TriStar 
tures  Mike  Medavoy 
sband  No.  3)  and  Duff  at 
harity  ball  in  Los  Angeles, 
)2.  He  was  said  to  have 
n  stunned  when  she  left 
1  for  Perelman. 


'IT 


prison  who  woi  keel 

rnia.  "Patricia  is  not 

JUSI  not  as  lough." 

,    Dufl  s  story  has  been  less 

I  if  Cli   patra  than  the  Perils  of 

h  the  implosion  o\'  her  mai- 
Perelraan,  the  tone  of  the  talk 
about  Duff  Has  darkened.  She  has  always 
had  enemies  especially  among  the  worn- 
en  who  have  watched  her  rise  from  mil- 
lionaire's wife  to  billionaire's  bride.  What 
is  striking  now  is  how  many  erstwhile 
friends  old  and  new,  in  Hollywood  and 
New  York    have  begun  to  pull  away. 

"I've  sort  of  made  an  effort  to  sort  of 
not  call  her  much  lately,"  admits  an  old 
friend  from  L.A.  "I  used  to  call  her  and 
check  in  to  commiserate,  and  I'd  get 
such  an  earful,  it  was  all  so  crazy,  that  I 
didn't  want  to  get  sucked  in  by  it. . . .  I 
don't  quite  understand  what  happened  to 
her  life." 

Model  Cheryl  Tiegs  responded  to  an 
interview  request  by  leaving  a  message  on 
my  voice  mail,  saying,  "As  much  as  I 
think  Patricia  is  a  very  complicated  char- 
acter, and  very  interesting  to  write  on  . . . 
I  don't  really  feel  right  about  betraying 
what  was  originally  a  friendship,  and  is 
no  longer." 

In  New  York,  newer  friends  have  sided 
with  Perelman— or  with  his  previous  wife, 
television  reporter  Claudia  Cohen,  whose 
divorce  from  Perelman,  once  bitter,  has 
now  resolved  itself  in  a  close  friendship 
with  him.  Cohen  is  a  longtime  New  Yorker 
who  is  said  to  be  furious  with  Duff  over 
her  efforts  to  drag  the  history  of  Perel- 
man's  last  divorce— which  was  conducted 
in  closed  court— into  her  own  litigation. 
Duff  has  complained  to  friends  that  the 
glamorous  crowd  that  embraced  her  upon 
her  arrival  in  New  York,  women  such  as 
Barbara  Walters  and  Martha  Stewart,  has 
now  spurned  her. 

Even  if  some  of  her  new  isolation  can 
be  explained  away  by  jealousy  or  oppor- 
tunism, much  is  clearly  the  fruit  of  her 
own  recent  conduct,  which  has  sometimes 
been  decidedly  odd.  "She's  just  incredi- 
bly, incredibly  suspicious  of  everyone," 
says  a  friend.  "She's  sure  that  the  servants 
and  the  nannies  are  bought  off  by  Ronald. 
She  accuses  everyone  of  stealing  things,  of 
sabotaging  her  scheduling,  of  making  her 
life  difficult  on  purpose."  The  speed  with 
which  she  has  hired  and  fired  law  firms  in 
her  divorce  case— 16  of  them,  in  all,  by 
the  count  of  Perelman's  lawyers— is  but  the 
clearest  symptom  of  the  chaos  Duff  has 
ushered  into  her  life. 

"She's  more  trouble  than  she's  worth," 
says  an  old  Hollywood  friend.  "There's  a 
lot  of  that  sense  in  the  air." 


he  name  Duff,  winch 
Patricia  lias  held  onto 
through  her  third  and 
fourth  marriages,  was 
earned  from  her  second 
husband,  a  Washington 
attorney  named  Daniel 
Dull';  before  Duff,  she- 
was  married  briefly  to 
Thomas  O.  Zabrodsky,  a  high-school 
sweetheart  whom  she  dated  for  years  and 
then  wedded  just  before  her  college  gradu- 
ation in  1976.  Before  that,  friends  and 
family  knew  her  as  Patsy  Orr.  But  even 
that  was  not  her  original  name.  When  she 
was  born,  in  April  1954,  it  was  as  Patricia 
Michelle  Hoar. 

Duff's  father,  a  former  navy  pilot  who 
became  an  executive  with  Lockheed  and, 
later,  Hughes  Aircraft,  legally  changed  the 
family's  name  to  Orr  in  1960,  reasoning 
that  "Hoar"  would  make  life  an  uphill 
struggle  for  three  daughters.  Patricia  was 
the  third  child— behind  one  sister  and  a 
brother,  with  her  second  sister  born  hard 
on  her  heels  a  year  and  a  half  later.  The 
Orr  children  spent  their  early  years  in 
Woodland  Hills,  in  the  San  Fernando  Val- 
ley, and  then  moved  to  Europe  when  their 
father  was  transferred  there.  Patricia  at- 
tended school  in  Bonn  and  then  at  the  In- 
ternational School  of  Brussels. 

Duff  doesn't  talk  much  about  her  family 
of  origin.  Friends  describe  her  as  some- 
what alienated  from  her  parents  and  sib- 
lings, as  nursing  a  sense  that  something 
essential  was  missing  in  her  passage  from 
childhood  to  adulthood.  Her  father  trav- 
eled almost  constantly,  the  parents'  mar- 
riage crumbled  over  time,  and  "Patsy" 
seems  to  have  felt  lost  in  her  middle  place 
in  the  small  crowd  of  her  siblings.  "She  did 
not  feel  . . .  emotionally  supported,"  says  a 
friend.  Another  person  describes  the  family 
as  "fractured,"  and  says  she  believes  that 
Duff's  relationships  with  men  are  an  effort 
"to  fill  this  void.  To  have  this  sense  of  a 
very  strong  relationship  with  somebody." 
In  this  view,  her  succession  of  marriages 
has  been  less  a  climb  up  the  ladder  than  a 
series  of  lunges  in  the  direction  of  security. 
How  many  other  girls  who  graduated  from 
college  in  1976,  after  all,  got  married  twice 
before  they  turned  27? 

"She's  always  escaping  from  a  powerful 
man  into  the  arms  of  an  even  more  pow- 
erful man,"  says  a  veteran  Duff-watcher. 

"This  is  really  who  she  thinks  she  is 

She's  not  calculating  on  the  surface;  she's 
a  scared  little  girl  looking  for  sympathy 
and  understanding." 

Once  out  of  secondary  school,  Duff 
enrolled  at  Barnard,  but  later  transferred 
to  Georgetown  University.  There,  she  has 


told  friends,  she  was  increasingly  domino 
ed  by  Zabrodsky,  who  had  Ibllowed  her 
the  States  from  Europe.  Zabrodsky  h 
been  depicted,  in  accounts  of  her  life,  i 
an  exotic,  somewhat  dangerous  figure 
whom  she  was  in  thrall.  As  she  has  to 
the  story-  a  tale  that  has  striking  paralle 
to  her  version  of  the  Perelman  saga— 1 
isolated  her  from  almost  every  other  s 
cial  contact  through  college,  and  eventu; 
ly  bullied  her  into  marriage. 

But  Zabrodsky,  who  today  is  a  hig 
level  executive  at  the  Reynolds  Meta 
Company  in  Brussels,  denies  with  sor 
heat  the  version  of  the  marriage  that  Di 
has  told.  "Some  of  the  things  that  ha\ 
been  said  I  consider  rather  defamatory 
he  says.  "I  hold  no  bitterness  toward  he 
But  I  have  been  disturbed  by  what's  sai 
about  me  in  the  press."  Theirs  was,  he  a 
knowledges,  a  "turbulent"  union.  "Thei 
was  a  battle  for  dominance  within  tl 
marriage.  Who  sets  the  agenda,  and 
forth.  Just  the  things  that  happen  whe 
you  put  two  very  domineering  people 

the  same  marriage But  I  don't  thir 

I'm  a  particularly  overbearing  man. 
found  that  it  was  a  marriage  of  equal; 
quite  frankly." 

In  any  case,  this  is  the  marriage  Duj 
has  airbrushed  from  some  versions  of  ha" 
life  story.  Friends  from  as  late  as  the  earl 
80s— before  her  marriage  to  Medavoy- 
were  aware  of  it.  But  as  she  rose  in  th 
world,  she  began  to  leave  Zabrodsky  oi 
of  her  history,  whether  talking  to  friend 
or  to  reporters.  "She  always  represente 
him  to  me  as  a  boyfriend,"  says  someon 
who  knows  Duff  very  well.  Another  sourc 
says  Duff  made  up  her  mind  that  the  mai 
riage  didn't  really  count;  because  sh 
agreed  to  it  under  duress,  in  her  view, 
was  as  if  it  had  never  taken  place  at  al 
She  has  described  it  as  lasting  only  for 
few  months.  But  Zabrodsky  says  they  wer 
married  for  more  than  a  year  before  the 
separated,  and  that  the  divorce  didn't  g 
through  for  at  least  two  years  after  that. 

Separated  from  Zabrodsky  and  arme< 
with  a  degree  in  international  relations  an< 
a  change  in  hair  color,  from  brunet 
blond,  Patricia  snagged  a  staff  post  at  th 
House  Select  Committee  on  Assassina 
tions,  which  had  been  appointed  to  invest 
gate  the  murders  of  John  F  Kennedy  an( 
Martin  Luther  King  Jr.  This  began  a  peri 
od,  lasting  about  six  years,  that  might  b< 
called  the  normal  chapter  in  Duff's  life. 

She  worked  on  the  committee  mostl; 
as  a  researcher,  a  job  requiring  a  top 
secret  clearance;  colleagues  thought  of  he 
as  smart  and  hardworking.  Later  sh< 
worked  for  John  McLaughlin,  the  forme 
priest  who  was  then  beginning  his  careei 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


PIER  DANS 

in  I'crelnian  ;ind  I'atricia 
.ii  a  ball  in  Beverly  Hills. 
.  I'erelman  recalls, 
looked  in  my  eyes  and 
rated  mc." 


w 


1TW 


Mgl|l 


"W 


lm; 


compared  Duff  to  the  survivors  of  the  Titanic. 


I  IKK  IIKAKT 
WILL  GO  ON 

Current  boyfriend  Senator 

Ibrricelli  and  Dull  al  a 

White  House  State  Dinner 

this  spring. 


Pal  Caddell,  Jimmj  Carter's  pollster;  and 
iltanl  Bob  Squier.  Those  who  knew  hei 
|]      in  to  remembei  her  more  vividly  as  ;i  pres- 
/. imming  pool,  in  her  bikini,  than  in  his  office.  Bui 
I  awaj  by  Squier,  ii  was  to  do  the  complicat- 
ing advertising  tunc  for  his  political  clients    far 
cupcake  job    and  she  worked  her  way  up  to  vice  presi- 
dent    i  the  small  firm.  "I've  always  said,  if  she  hadn't  quit, 
be  a  partner  today,"  says  Squier. 
"Of  course,  she  was  also  a  trophy  office  wife  for  both"  Cad- 
dell and  Squier,  says  Hendrik  Herl/berg,  who  was  a  Carter 
speechwriter,  "but  what  made  her  such  a  valuable  trophy  was 
thai  once  she  had  stunned  you  with  her  looks  she  could  then 
surprise  you  with  her  brains." 

Friends'  memories  of  this  time  in  her  life  summon  up  a  Po- 
tomac version  of  Holly  Golightly,  dating  congressmen  -no- 
tably Christopher  Dodd  of  Connecticut,  who  was  on  the 
Assassinations  Committee,  and  California  representative  Pete 
Stark  and  befriending  senators  and  White  House  aides.  She 
was  widely  liked.  "I  could  name  you  50  people  about  whom  I'd 
sooner  have  said,  'This  person  is  going  to  try  and  push  to  the 
top.'  Or  This  person  is  going  for  the  power,'"  says  someone 
who  became  friendly  with  Patricia  during  this  period.  Indeed, 
she  seemed  to  turn  down  the  more  glamorous  opportunities 
that  came  her  way,  choosing  for  her  next  husband  Daniel  Duff, 
a  handsome,  easygoing  government  lawyer. 

"I  guess  I'm  the  odd  character  in  this  line  of  men,"  says 
Duff,  who  is  now  general  counsel  for  a  transportation  trade  as- 
sociation. "Maybe  I  offered  what  appeared  to  be  security  and 
stability."  They  met  in  1978  and  married  in  1980.  The  Duffs 
lived  in  a  reclaimed  town  house  in  the  tumbledown  neighbor- 
hood of  Logan  Circle;  Patricia  drove  an  old  Vega  that  leaked 
whenever  it  rained.  For  a  time,  this  life  seemed  enough.  "She 
was  not  supersophisticated  at  that  point,"  recalls  Daniel  Duff. 
"There  was  still  a  kind  of  innocent  quality  about  her." 

"She  didn't  seem  to  come  from  any  kind  of  fancy  back- 
ground. She  just  sort  of  seemed  to— poof!— appear,"  says  some- 
one who  met  her  professionally  in  those  years.  "She  had  a  lot  of 
poise,  and  knew  a  lot  of  people,  but  it  seemed  to  be  clearly  all 
on  her  own  steam." 

Yet  few  thought  of  her  then  as  someone  truly  engaged  with 
politics  as  a  profession.  And  on  the  side  she  had  begun  to  find 
modeling  and  acting  work— posing  on  the  cover  of  The  Washing- 
Ionian  magazine,  landing  a  national  TV  ad  for  Freixenet  cham- 
pagne, and  commuting  to  New  York  to  take  acting  classes.  She 
was  invited  to  Los  Angeles  to  audition  for  a  continuing  role  on 
Bruce  Paltrow's  NBC  series,  St.  Elsewhere.  And  though  she  didn't 
get  the  part,  her  compass  shifted.  She  moved  "temporarily"  to 
Los  Angeles,  but  never  really  returned  to  Washington,  and  left 
Duff  for  good  in  1984. 

In  the  legend  according  to  Patricia,  she  was  sent  to  L.A.  that 
year  by  Gary  Hart's  presidential  campaign  to  organize  Hollywood 
on  the  candidate's  behalf— the  founding  element  in  her  carefully 
honed  image  as  the  savvy  political  missionary  sent  to  bring 
substance  to  the  land  of  laughs.  She  did  end  up  working  for  the 
campaign  as  liaison  to  the  celebrities  who  supported  it.  But  sev- 
eral sources  who  knew  her  at  the  time,  both  inside  and  outside 
the  Hart  campaign,  remember  her  shift  to  Hollywood  as  the  move 
of  an  aspiring  actress;  politics,  they  say,  was  an  afterthought. 

She  arrived  in  Hollywood  with  an  <  ontinued  on  pagi    i 9 ■ 


O>pol  I  i  ci  ft  4 

A  Tough 

Guy 
in  Tails 


director  Guy 


Ritchie  cast  legendary  soccer  hard  man  Vinnie  Jones 
as  the  stoic  epicenter  of  his  baroque  scuzz  film, 
foclc,  Stock  and  Two  Smoking  Barrels,  few  expected 
the  newcomer  to  score  so  big.  Jones  was  every  bit 
as  threatening  as  one  would  have  imagined,  but  crit- 
ics were  amazed  to  find  that  he  also  brought  restraint 
and  dry  wit  to  his  first  movie  role.  It  helps  that  Jones 
has  a  face  that  could  have  been  designed  for  the 
big  screen:  Paul  Newman  as  constructed  by  Dr. 
Frankenstein.  Hollywood  has  come  calling  in  the 
shape  of  box-office  king  Jerry  Bruckheimer  (Arma- 
geddon) and  his  latest  mega-production,  Gone  in 
60  Seconds.  In  the  film,  due  out  next  year,  Jones 
plays  The  Sphinx,  a  taciturn  member  of  Nicolas 
Cage's  reassembled  car-theft  gang.  As  a  midfield 
destroyer  with  Wimbledon  F.C.'s  "Crazy  Gang" 
side,  Jones  was  routinely  lambasted  in  the  press 
and  taunted  by  opposing  teams'  fans.  So  he's  glad 
to  be  muscling  into  the  movie  game,  even  if  it 
means  going  straight  into  the  major  leagues. 
"There's  not  the  same  pressures  here  as  there  is  as 
a  footballer,"  says  Jones.  "Everybody  likes  a  pat  on 
the  back  occasionally,  and  I've  had  14  years  of 
being  kicked  in  the  groin."  -STEVEN  DALY 


VANITY     FAIR 


PHOTOGRAPH     BY      BRUCE      WEBER 


A  JONES 
FOR   HOLLYWOOD 


With  his  brutally  down-to-earth 

performance  in 

Lock,  Stock  and  Two  Smoking  Barrels, 

legendary  British  soccer  hard  man 

Vinnie  Jones  demonstrated  Hollywood 

muscle— and  landed  a  role  in 

Jerry  Bruckheimer's  Gone  in  60  Seconds. 

Jones  was  photographed  in  front 

of  the  Tower  Bridge  in  London 

on  April  11,  1999. 


I 


,., 


As  the  legendary  Four  Seasons  restaurant  turns  40, 

MMl  SHERATON  returns  to  early  1959,  when  Joseph  Baum 

and  Jerome  Brody  assembled  a  perfectionist  presidium — includin, 

chefs  Albert  Stockli  and  Albert  Kumin — to  create  the  first  truly 

contemporary  American  restaurant,  in  New  York's  Seagram  Building. 

designed  by  Mies  van  der  Rohe  and  Philip  Johnson.  For  Alex 

von  Bidder  and  Julian  Niccolini,  who  now  preside  over  this  ground 

zero  of  power  lunching,  the  divinity  is^still  in  the  details,  from 

Michael  Eisner's  post-coronary-bypass  diekto  the  bison  fillet  from 

Edgar  M.  Bronfman's  ranch  to  the  status  sealing  of  such  regulars 

as  Barbara  Walters,  Barry  Diller,  and  Sanford  Weill 


I: 


I 


m 


i 


SEASONED  VETERANS 


These  individuals,  who  helped  create  the  Four  Seasons,  were 

photographed  at  the  bar  of  the  Grill  Room  beneath  one  of  the  Richard 

Lippold  sculptures  in  the  spring  of  this  year.  Outside  the  bar, 

counterclockwise  from  rear  left:  former  pastry  chef  Albert  Kumin,  former 

press  agent  Roger  Martin,  landscape  architect  Karl  Linn,  architecture  critic 

Ada  Louise  Huxtable  (who  helped  design  the  tableware),  project  director 

Phyllis  Lambert,  architect  Philip  Johnson,  sculptor  Richard  Lippold,  lawyer 

Lester  kleppei,  former  co-owner  Tom  Margittai.  Inside  the  bar,  from 

left:  former  executive  chef  Seppi  Renggli,  current  chef  Hitsch  Albin,  former 

press  agent  Philip  Miles,  current  pastry  chef  Patrick  Lemble,  adman 

George  Lois,  food  writer  Mimi  Sheraton,  sculptor  Marilynn  Gelfman  Karp, 

adman  Ron  Holland,  menu  and  logo  designer  Emil  Antonucci,  former 

director  George  Lang,  current  co-directors  Alex  von  Bidder 

and  Julian  Niccolini  (seated  on  bar' 


*** 


IN  THE  SUN 


photograph    by    MICHAEL     O'NEIIL 


n 


his  month,  as  the  Four 
Seasons  restaurant  celebrates  its  40th  birthday,  it  has  just 
won  the  1999  James  Beard  award  as  the  outstanding  res- 
taurant in  the  country,  and  it  also  continues  unchallenged 
to  maintain  its  enduring  status  as  absolute  ground  zero  for 
power  lunching  in  Manhattan.  Located  at  the  corner  of 
Park.  Avenue  and  52nd  Street  in  the  Seagram  Building,  de- 
signed by  Ludwig  Mies  van  der  Rohe  with  Philip  Johnson 
as  his  associate  and  completed  in  1958,  the  restaurant  is  a 
monument  to  timeless  elegance,  from  the  entrance  area's 
travertine  walls  hung  with  Joan  Miro  tapestries  to  the  Grill 
and  Pool  Rooms  upstairs,  distinguished  by  French-walnut 
paneling  and  ceiling-high  windows  curtained  in  swags  of 
brass-,  copper-,  and  silver-colored  chains,  rippling  like  a 
scrim.  In  addition  to  seasonally  changing  plants  and 
trees,  the  decor  includes  two  suspended 
sculptures  of  bronze  rods  by  Richard 
Lippold  and  a  romantic  curtain  paint- 
ed by  Pablo  Picasso  for  a  Diaghilev 
ballet,  which  hangs  in  the  passage  be- 
tween the  two  rooms. 

On  any  given  day  in  the  Grill  you 
can  see  a  mix  of  high-profile  lunch- 
ers  which  might  include  former  New 
York  governor  Mario  Cuomo,  ex- 
mayor  Ed  Koch,  Barbara  Walters, 
Diane  Sawyer,  Bill  Blass,  and  Barry 
Diller.  The  great  mystery  is  how  the 
reserved  seating  in  this  de  facto  club 
is  orchestrated  each  day  by  the  co- 
directors  and  minority  owners,  Swiss-born  Alex  von  Bidder,  who 
tends  mostly  to  business  matters,  and  the  exuberant  Julian  Nicco- 
lini,  a  native  of  Lucca,  Italy,  who  works  the  floor.  Trideep  Bose, 
the  manager,  described  by  von  Bidder  as  "the  next  generation," 
also  seems  to  have  a  sixth  sense  for  the  nuances  of  the  room. 

According  to  Niccolini,  the  only  regulars  who  are  always  giv- 
en the  same  table  are  Edgar  M.  Bronfman,  chairman  of  Sea- 
gram, the  majority  owner  of  the  restaurant  since  1995  (Table 
No.  37);  Seagram  C.E.O.  Edgar  Bronfman  Jr.  (Table  No.  45); 
Philip  Johnson  (Table  No.  32);  and  Simon  &  Schuster  editor  in 
chief  Michael  Korda  (Table  No.  35).  Beyond  that,  some  juggling 
is  usually  necessary.  Niccolini  says,  "There  are  about  10  to  12 


"Brooke  Astor  was  sitting  at  rr 
table,"  says  Arthur  Loel ; 
So  Julian  gave  me  another— n< 
as  good  but  it  was  all  right 


VANITY     FAIR 


wise  from  top  left:  co-owner 
Kovi  with  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
indsor,  late  60s;  Anna  Wintour  and 
and  Ahmet  Ertegun  arrive  at  a  party, 
90s;  the  Pool  Room  in  springtime; 
ill  Room  on  a  typical  day,  late  June 
s  year;  Philip  Johnson,  Ludwig 
.  van  der  Rohe,  and  Phyllis  Lambert 
ssing  the  restaurant's  design,  1958; 
ts'  Home  Journal  executive  editor 
ire  Hershey,  Jacqueline  Onassis, 
Radziwill,  and  Norman  Mailer  at  a 
.  party,  1974;  the  Seagram  Building 
►58;  Jerome  Brody  of  Restaurant 
iciates  with  John  F.  Kennedy 
e  president's  45th-birthday  dinner, 
19,  1962. 


9  I 


guests  who  have  daily  reservations,  and  each  morning  we  call 
them  to  see  if  they  plan  to  come."  These  include  GQ  editor  Art 
Cooper,  Citigroup  co-chairman  Sanford  Weill,  and  Bristol- 
Myers  Squibb  chairman  emeritus  Richard  Gelb.  Asked  how 
they  decide  who  goes  where  each  day,  von  Bidder  says,  "That  is 
our  secret,  and  I  will  not  discuss  it.  Julian  and  I  are  like  two 
halves  of  the  same  brain.  We  know  who  to  put  where  without 
any  discussion."  When  pressed,  Niccolini  admits  that  they  keep 
a  few  tables  open  for  emergencies.  "We  hold  them  until  noon," 
says,  "and  usually  they  are  gone  by  12:15." 

Edgar  Bronfman  Jr.'s  choice 
of  Table  No.  45,  on  the  balcony, 
has  a  long  history,  von  Bidder 
says.  "When  he  was  in  his  20s 
and  not  with  Seagram,  Edgar  ju- 
nior used  to  come  in  wearing 
jeans.  That  was  a  problem  for  us, 
and  we  solved  it  by  putting  him 
on  the  balcony.  When  he  joined 
the  company  and  began  wearing 
grown-up  clothes,  we  asked  if  he 
wanted  his  table  changed,  and  he 
said  no.  The  same  thing  hap- 
pened when  he  became  C.E.O. 
But  when  Seagram  bought  the 
Four  Seasons,  he  said  he  would 
sit  wherever  it  was  best  for 
the  restaurant.  So  we  left  him 
up  there."  Entertainment  lawyer 
Robert  H.  Montgomery  Jr.  adds,  "The  balcony, 
where  I  sit,  was  Siberia  until  Edgar  junior  became 
C.E.O.,  and  suddenly  it  was  the  place  to  be." 

ccurrences  in  the  Grill  Room 
have  a  way  of  becoming  leg- 
ends. Von  Bidder  vividly  recalls 
May  23,    1990,  when  Maria 
Maples,  who  was  being  seated 
at  a  table,  was  served  with  a 
subpoena  on  behalf  of  Ivana 
Trump.  "She  just  let  out  a  big 
gasp,"  he  says.  On  December  19,  1996,  an  animal- 
rights  activist  arrived  and  announced  she  was  join- 
ing Vogue  editor  Anna  Wintour  for  dessert,  then 
walked  to  Wintour's  table  and  dropped  a  dead  rac- 
coon on  it,  shouting,  "Anna  wears  fur  hats!" 

Arthur  Loeb,  the  owner  of  the  Madison  Avenue 
Bookshop  and  son  of  investment  banker  John 
Loeb,  whose  offices  used  to  be  in  the  Seagram 
Building,  says,  "I  loved  having  lunch  in  the  Grill  with  my  father, 
who  always  sat  at  Table  No.  36.  After  he  died,  I  asked  for  that 
table  whenever  I  went  there  and  especially  when  I  was  having 
unch  with  Albert  H.  Gordon,  who  is  98  and  who  was  the  chair- 
man of  Kidder,  Peabody  and  a  family  friend.  One  day  this  past 
May  I  made  a  reservation,  and  I  walked  in  and  saw  Brooke  As- 
tor  sitting  at  my  table  with  a  guest.  She,  too,  is  an  old  friend  and 
a  customer.  I  could  hardly  make  a  scene.  So  Julian  gave  me  an- 
other table    not  as  good,  but  it  was  all  right." 

Niccolini  notes,  "Brooke  Astor  just  walked  in  with  Pamela 
Fiori,  the  editor  of  Town  &  Country,  and  sat  right  down  at  that 
table.  I  didn't  have  the  nerve  to  tell  her  it  was  reserved  for  some- 


lolutelj  full,  but  luckily  a  guest  who  had  an 

ic   rigbl  moment.  Wc  don't  get  too  many 

ibout  t  ibles.  Usually  tliey  come  from  people  who 

•  in     .1  year  and  expect  the  best  spot.  People  who 

ibli       ill  themselves  don't  really  care  where  they  sit." 


What  I  see  whenever  I  enter  the  Four 
Seasons  is  a  split-second  flashback  to 
my  first  glimpse  of  it,  back  in  early 
1959:  a  dusky  canyon  of  gray  con- 
crete with  shafts  of  light  filtering 
through  a  haze  of  dust,  and  enough 
hanging  biaxial  cable  for  six  Tarzans 
to  swing  across  this  artificial  jungle. 
( ruided  through  the  obstacle  course  of  wires,  drop  cloths,  and  scaf- 
folding,  1  was,  as  a  newly  hired  research  consultant,  being  given  an 
indoctrination  in  what  this  restaurant  would  be  about. 

My  guide  was  the  late  Joseph  H.  Baum,  the  vice  president  and 
creative  genius  of  Restaurant  Associates  (R.A.),  the  organization 
chosen  to  invent  and  operate  the  restaurant  in  this  new  skyscraper. 
A  graduate  of  Cornell's  hotel-administration  school,  Baum  was  a 
veteran  of  the  Schine  Hotel  chain  and  the  old  Monte  Carlo  supper 
club,  on  East  54th  Street.  Short  and  stocky  in  his  stiffly  tailored 
suits,  he  looked  upholstered,  and  though  he  seemed  imbued  with 
a  Napoleon  complex,  his  modus  operandi  was  closer  to  Cecil  B. 
DeMille's.  He  had  a  reputation  as  a  short-tempered  screamer,  but 
I  was  a  budding  food  writer,  eager  to  taste  everything  in  the  world  as 
quickly  as  possible,  so  I  stuck,  and  I  soon  discovered  that  Baum  was 
also  a  brilliant  perfectionist,  funny  and  intensely  loyal  to  those  he 
came  to  value.  As  I  look  back,  in  all  my  years  as  a  restaurant  critic 
and  food  writer,  this  turned  out  to  be  my  most  valuable  assignment. 
Keeping  Baum  on  a  long  leash  was  R.A.  president  Jerome 
Brody,  a  savvy  entrepreneur  with  a  taste  for  class.  Along  with 
Albert  Stockli,  their  Swiss  chef,  Lester  Klepper,  their  lawyer, 
and  Philip  Miles,  their  PR.  director,  Baum  and  Brody  had  al- 
ready racked  up  successes  that  included  an  upscale  restaurant  in 
the  Newark  airport,  the  kitschy  Hawaiian  Room  in  the  Hotel 
Lexington,  and  the  extravaganza  known  as  the  Forum  of  the 
Twelve  Caesars  in  Rockefeller  Center. 

Baum's  message  to  me  that  morning  still  rings  clear:  This 
would  be  the  first  really  contemporary  American  restaurant  re- 
flecting New  York's  role  as  the  crossroads  of  the  world.  We 
would  create  a  menu  inspired  by  dishes  from  all  over  the  globe, 
freely  mixing  ingredients  and  cooking  techniques.  We  eventually 
invented  recipes  that  would  be  considered  cutting  edge  in  Cali- 
fornia today:  barquette  of  flounder  with  glazed  fruits,  julep  of 
crabmeat  in  sweet  pepper,  herbed  lobster  parfait,  Amish  ham 
steak  with  a  glaze  of  the  pungent  citrus  fruit  calamondin.  There 
were  also  some  prescient  Japanese  accents— wasabi  horseradish 
as  well  as  shrimp  in  soy  sauce— because  Baum  had  come  under 
the  spell  of  House  Beautiful  editor  Elizabeth  Gordon,  who  was 
then  championing  Japan  and  the  aesthetics  of  shibui,  or  under- 
stated elegance.  After  the  opening,  restaurant  critic  Silas  Spitzer, 
in  the  December  1959  issue  of  Holiday  magazine,  called  the 
Four  Seasons  food  "the  New  American  Cuisine." 

This  came  at  a  time  when  only  French  cuisine  had  luxury 
status  and  high-class  menus  were  invariably  written  in  that  lan- 
guage. Craig  Claiborne  was  then  the  food  editor  of  The  New 
York  Times,  and  since  he  was  a  gastronomic  Francophile,  Baum 
and  Brody  dreaded  his  review.  Praising  the  decor,  the  creators' 
intent,  and  some  of  the  dishes,  Claiborne  declared,  "On  the 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


whole,  the  cuisine  is  not  exquisite  in  the  sense  that  la  gratlde 
sine  Inuicaise  at  its  superlative  best  is  exquisite ."  He  did,  how 
or,  praise  one  of  Baum's  pet  innovations  reasonable  prices 
wines  so  that  customers  could  have  a  good  time,  a  policy  Bai 
would  carry  over  to  his  later  restaurants  such  as  Windows 
the  World  in  the  World  Trade  Center  and  the  Rainbow  Room 
Rockefeller  Center.  But  if  he  was  low  on  wine  prices,  he  tool 
leap  in  pricing  a  martini.  "Let's  see  if  we  can  get  a  buck  for 
he  said  with  a  devilish  grin.  (Today,  a  martini  at  the  lour  S 
sons  costs  $12.) 

Most  of  all,  Baum  wanted  seasonal  foods,  organic  where  p 
sible  but  always  fresh.  To  a  memorial  service  for  Baum,  w 
died  last  October,  Alice  Waters  of  Chez  Panisse  in  Berkeley,  C 
ifornia,  sent  a  videotaped  tribute,  since  she  could  not  attend 
it  she  described  a  time,  several  years  before,  when  she  a 
Baum  had  talked  and  she  had  urged  him  to  showcase  orgai 
foods  and  heirloom  produce  varieties.  I  could  barely  stifle  a  g 
faw.  Baum  was  tirelessly  seeking  the  sources  of  such  foods  wh 
Waters  was  probably  in  kindergarten.  He  searched  everywta 
for  potted  herbs  that  would  grow  in  the  Four  Seasons  kitche 
he  obtained  wild  mushrooms  from  the  composer  John  Cage, 
amateur  mycologist  who  foraged  in  Rockland  County;  and 
attempted  to  get  a  steady  supply  of  organic  vegetables  frc 
Malabar  Farm,  the  ecological  agricultural  experiment  develop 
in  Ohio  by  the  novelist  Louis  Bromfield.  It  took  us  two  weeks 
choose  the  type  and  grind  of  table  pepper,  and  at  least  a  moc 
to  perfect  such  specialties  as  the  mini-croissants  and  candi 
strawberries  served  in  the  Pool  Room.  Big  farm  baskets  of  fre 
vegetables  were  presented  to  diners  for  their  selection,  and  t 
hors  d'oeuvre  wagons  were  designed  with  sausage  trees. 

Baum  charged  me  with  scouring  books  and  magazines  1 
seasonal  foods— fiddlehead  ferns,  ramps,  and  shad  for  sprir 
pomegranates,  walnuts  still  in  their  velvety  green  husks,  ai 
game  for  fall.  He  was  interested  in  the  food  lore  of  all  countri 
and  cultures— rice-harvest  rites  in  Indonesia,  the  custom  of  e; 
ing  bitter  greens  in  springtime  in  the  Pennsylvania  Dutch  cou 
try  as  well  as  along  the  Adriatic  shores  of  Apulia,  the  serving 
chervil  soup  in  Germany  on  Holy  Thursday. 

I  also  compiled  a  food  library  and  searched  for  such  high 
specialized  cooking  equipment  as  a  Portuguese  cataplana,  use 
to  make  a  traditional  clam-and-sausage  dish,  and  a  vertical  broil 
for  preparing  Turkish  doner  kebab.  And  I  was  just  one  of  tl 
food  researchers,  who  included,  most  notably,  James  Beard, 
ready  the  grand  Pooh-Bah  of  American  cookery.  It  was  Beard,  as 
recall,  who  finally  went  to  Istanbul  and  obtained  the  vertical  broik 

Meanwhile,  creating  original  desserts  for  the  restaurant  wi 
the  master  Swiss  pastry  chef  Albert  Kumin.  A  wizard  wii 
chocolate,  Kumin  went  on  to  Windows  on  the  World  and  late 
in  1979,  became  the  White  House  pastry  chef  for  the  Carters 

For  me,  the  fun  started  about  a  month  before  tl 
restaurant  was  to  have  its  "soft"  opening, 
unannounced  trial  period  that  would  allow  us 
work  out  kinks  before  the  public  and  press  wei 
invited  in.  During  four  scorchingly  hot  weeks 
late  June  and  early  July,  we  had  daily  tastings 
the  banquet  room  of  the  Hotel  Lexington, 
each  session,  8  or  10  of  us  would  put  Stock 
and  Kumin  through  the  paces  of  preparing  35  dishes. 

Our  assignment  for  the  two-week  soft  opening  was  to  go 
the  restaurant  for  lunch  and  dinner  whenever  possible,  takin 

AUGUST     199 


;nds  and  ordering  all  over  the  menu,  at  no  charge.  Baum, 

ickli.  and  Kumin  scrutinized  every  dish  as  it  came  out  of  the 

Chen,  sending  it  back  if  it  was  in  any  way  incorrect.  One 

:ning  Baum  passed  my  table  and  asked  what  I  had  ordered. 

"The  goat,"  I  answered. 

"You  must  be  crazy,  eating  goat,"  he  said. 

"Then  why  is  it  on  the  menu?" 

"Because  people  feel  better  eating  steak  if  they  know  they 

uld  have  had  goat,"  he  said. 

It  has  been  said  that  Baum  got  the  name  for  the  restaurant  from 
i  Japanese  haiku.  I  think  he  took  it  from  the  Vier  Jahreszeiten 
•  our  Seasons)  hotel  in  Munich,  the  site  of  one  of  his  favorite 
itaurants,  Walterspiel.  Once,  when  he  and  I  were  in  a  cab  going 
>m  his  office  to  the  restaurant,  Vivaldi's  Four  Seasons  was  on 
; driver's  radio.  "Shh!"  Baum  said.  "They're  playing  my  song." 

The  overriding  mandate  for  excellence  really  began 
with  the  design  of  the  Seagram  Building  itself 
and  the  commitment  to  the  project  of  the  Bronf- 
mans,  the  Canadian  family  behind  the  Seagram 
distilling  empire.  When  president  Sam  Bronfman 
decided  to  build  his  American  headquarters,  he 
hired  the  architect  Charles  Luckman.  Upon  see- 
ing Luckman's  proposal,  Phyllis  Bronfman  Lam- 
:rt,  then  27  and  living  in  Paris,  sent  her  father  a  1,200-word 
Iter  explaining  why  the  building  had  to  be  of  far  greater  distinc- 
)n.  "She  was  the  apple  of  her  father's  eye,"  Philip  Johnson  tells 
ie  in  his  office,  "and  Sam  told  her  that  if  she  would  come  back 
e  building  project  would  be  hers."  Lambert  chose  Mies  van  der 
ohe  as  the  architect,  in  association  with  Philip  Johnson,  who  was 
en  head  of  the  architecture  and  design  department  at  the  Muse- 
n  of  Modern  Art.  Lambert  herself  went  on  to  become  an  archi- 
ct  and  found  the  Canadian  Centre  for  Architecture  in  Montreal. 
"The  job  was  an  architect's  dream  come  true,"  Johnson  says. 
^Ir.  Sam  held  the  purse  strings,  and  there  were  none.  We  got 
hatever  we  wanted.  I'll  never  forget  the  day  Mr.  Sam,  Mies, 
id  I  were  walking  along  Park  Avenue  discussing 
e  building  materials  we  might  use.  Sam  saw 
imething  made  of  bronze  and  said  'How 
•out  that?'  Knowing  how  expensive  bronze  was, 
lies  gulped.  But  bronze  it  was." 
Jerome  Brody  and  Lester  Klepper  won  the 
ise  for  Restaurant  Associates.  As  many  recall, 
im  Bronfman's  only  expressed  hope  for  the 
staurant  was  that  he  would  be  able  to  get  "a 
tod  piece  of  flanken."  Brody  remembers  that 
A.  had  complete  contractual  freedom  re- 
rding  interior  design,  but  Klepper  and  John- 
n  both  say  that  Johnson  had  the  final  word. 
Johnson  suggested  Richard  Kelly  to  do 
e  lighting  and  found  the  textile  designer 
arie  Nichols,  who  came  up  with  the  chain 
ea  for  the  windows.  "Everyone  was  amazed  to 
e  them  rippling,"  Johnson  says,  explaining  that  the  motion  is 
used  by  air  currents  resulting  from 
e  different  tempera- 
res  inside  and  outside 
e  glass  panes. 
Having  worked  with 
e  decorating  firm  of 
illiam  Pahlmann  Asso- 


ciates on  the  Forum  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,  R.A.  hired  Pahlmann 
for  this  job,  too,  much  to  Johnson's  consternation.  "I  was  given  the 
restaurants  to  oversee  by  Mies,"  says  Johnson,  "and  I  only  cared 
about  the  Grill.  I  hated  Pahlmann's  work,  but  I  told  him  to  do  the 
big  dining  room.  The  pool  was  his  idea  and,  I  must  say,  a  good 
one.  It  was  a  way  of  cutting  down  on  the  huge  center  space  that 
made  the  room  seem  like  a  wasteland."  No  one  will  say  how  many 
guests  have  fallen  or  jumped  into  that  pool  over  the  years.  "Let's  just 
say  it  has  happened,"  says  Alex  von  Bidder  with  a  sigh. 

Phyllis  Lambert  wanted  Picasso  to  sculpt  four  bronze  trees  for 
the  corners  of  the  pool.  "I  went  to  see  him  and  asked  him,  but  he 
refused,"  she  says.  "He  really  wanted  to  sell  me  sculptures  he  had 
of  bathers  for  the  plaza  in  front  of  the  building."  Having  real  trees 
was  the  next  choice.  Landscape  architect  Karl  Linn  chose  plant 
and  tree  varieties  that  would  grow  indoors  and  found  Everett 
Conklin,  a  New  Jersey  landscape  contractor,  to  supply  them. 

Johnson  recommended  the  late  industrial  designer  Garth  Hux- 
table  to  create  the  glassware  and  silver  serving  pieces,  which  he 
did  with  some  input  from  his  wife,  Ada  Louise  Huxtable,  already 


"The  most  powerful 

person,"  Michael  Korda 

wrote,  "is  the  one 

who  can  order  the  meal 

with  the  lowest 

number  of  calories? 


SUMMER  aX  \\\\£ft 


ii^VTER 


THE    FOUR 


SEASONS 


gr»lU 


CHANGING  MENU 

Above,  two  menus  from  1982, 
one  for  summer,  the  other 
for  autumn.  Left,  the  top  of 
a  1960s  menu,  with  the 
Four  Seasons  logo:  trees 
in  pink,  green,  red.  and 
cinnamon  brown 


vTODD     EBERLE 


'The  job  was  an  architects 

dream  come  true'1 

says  Philip  Johnson. 

"Mr.  Sam  held  the 

purse  strings,  and  there 

were  none." 


14 


^,v 


*———m 


POWERHOUSE 


Diners  come  in  from  Em  52nd 

Street  to  the  lobby,  opposite,  with  its 

tnmrtbM  walls.  Joan  Mini  tapestries,  and 

furniture  designed  bv  Mies  \an  der  Rohe. 

Carpeted  stairs  lead  from  the  lobby  to  the  Philip 

Johnson-designed  Grill  Room  and  reception  area. 

uhovi;  with  its  leather  couches  and  ottomans. 

rrench-Malnuf  paneling,  chain  curtains,  and  trees 

with  silk  cherry  blossoms  (for  spring ). 


dan  and  critic  although  not  yet  the  Pulitzer 

.mill  later  become  at  The  New  York  Times 

i.i/y  OD  some  things,"  Ada  Louise  Hux- 

lui      in  the  Pool  Room.  She  recalls  the  harangues 

itv  thai  liad  a  particular  flange  at  the  base, 

:'.  11  111  m  inted  to  eliminate.  "Look  at  these  glasses  now," 

no  longer  the  same  shape."  They're  no  longer 

made  oi  lead  crystal,  either. 

age  u  ccs.  serving  carts,  and  a  bowl  with  four  splayed  feet 
that  could  lake  a  flat  tray  liner  to  hold  cookies  were  among 
Garth  Huxtable's  design  triumphs,  several  of  which  are  in  the 
permanent  collection  of  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art. 

Ada  Louise  Huxtable  and  Phyllis  Lambert  both  notice  that 
artificial  trees  have  replaced  the  ficus  rubber  trees  chosen  by 
Linn  for  the  Pool  Room.  "I'll  have  to  talk  to  them  about  that," 
Lambert  says,  and  a  week  or  so  later  von  Bidder  reports  that 
she  has  done  so,  in  no  uncertain  terms. 

Like  Michelangelo  in  the  Sistine  Chapel,  Richard  Lippold 
worked  for  months  on  scaffolds  in  the  Grill  Room,  hanging  each 
of  the  more  than  4,000  rods  in  his  sculptures  by  two  wires.  He 
was  assisted  by  an  intern,  Marilynn  Gelfman,  whose  occasional 
short  skirt  attracted  considerable  attention  from  the  workmen  be- 
low. Now  married  to  Ivan  Karp,  she  is  a  professor  of  fine  arts  at 
New  York  University.  The  sculptures  are  cleaned  rod  by  rod,  by 
Lippold's  associate,  Gianni  Morselli,  at  a  cost  of  about  $20,000. 
Other  art  on  the  premises  has  included  works  by  Larry 
Rivers,  Grace  Hartigan,  Roy  Lichtenstein,  and  Robert  Delaunay, 
on  loan  from  the  Joseph  E.  Seagram  &  Sons  collection,  and 
chairs  designed  by  Charles  Eames  and  Mies  van  der  Rohe,  in 
the  dining  rooms,  and  by  Eero  Saarinen,  in  the  rest  rooms. 

The  restaurant  logo  and  menus  were  drawn  by  Emil 
Antonucci.  He  came  up  with  four  stylized  trees 
as  the  symbol  of  the  place  and  developed  the  sea- 
sonal color  scheme:  blossom  pink  for  spring,  leaf 
green  for  summer,  red  for  autumn,  and  cinnamon- 
chocolate  brown  for  winter.  This  color  scheme 
carried  over  to  the  uniforms  with  ties  and  cummer- 
bunds for  the  dining-room  staff;  to  a  tile  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  restaurant's  original  black  service  plate,  which  suggested 
a  phonograph  record;  and  to  the  matchbooks  and  menu  covers. 

For  the  menus,  printer  William  Doerfler  selected  rough  vel- 
lum plus  a  cover  of  Japanese  rice  paper  textured  with  silky 
threads.  "Bill  bought  out  a  one-year  supply  of  that  paper  from  a 
Japanese  importer,"  Antonucci  says.  "Then  he  had  to  devise  the 
inks  for  printing  and  silk-screening."  The  result  was  so  expensive 
that  Baum  hated  to  reprint  the  menu  if  a  typographical  error 
occurred  or  if  a  food  on  it  became  unavailable. 

That  latter  consideration  sparked  one  of  our  more  electric 
meetings.  Fresh  wild  morels  were  going  to  be  on  the  menu,  at  a 
time  when  only  white  champignons  and  dried  cepes  could  be 
found  in  American  markets.  Sylvia  Schur,  a  former  food  editor 
of  Look  magazine,  assured  Baum  that  she  had  a  reliable  contact 
for  morels.  He  glared  at  her  and  screamed,  "If  I  print  morels  on 
this  menu,  you'd  better  come  up  with  them,  if  you  have  to  grow 
them  in  your  armpits!" 

Roger  Martin,  who  worked  with  Philip  Miles,  recalls  that  in 
those  days  the  Pool  Room  was  it.  The  Grill  got  mainly  the  disap- 
pointed overflow  from  the  Pool  Room.  The  most  desirable  seats 
were  poolside;  the  outer  edges  near  the  windows  were  scorned. 
Regulars  included  Charles  Revson,  Roy  Conn,  Senator  Jacob  Javits, 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


| 


lawyer  Louis  Ni/cr,  and  movie  mogul  Joe  Levine,  who  gave  rru 
lavish  parlies  in  the  Pool  Room  and  brought  in  such  stars  as  Sop 
Loren,  Franchot  Tone,  and  Natalie  Wood  and  Robert  Wagne 

The  early  opulence  of  the  restaurant  culminated  in  1962  w 
two  quite  different  parties,  both  producing  what  Philip  Miles 
scribes  as  "mountains  of  clips."  The  first,  on  May  19,  was 
45th-birthday  party  for  President  John  F.  Kennedy,  a  $1,000 
plate  Democratic  Party  fund-raiser.  Among  the  400  guests  v 
Marilyn  Monroe,  who  continued  on  to  Madison  Square  G 
den,  where  she  made  her  legendary  appearance  singing  "Hap 
Birthday,  Mr.  President." 

The  late  Stuart  Levin,  who  was  then  director  of  the  rest 
rant,  told  John  Mariani  for  The  Four  Seasons,  a  history  of 
restaurant  through  1994,  that  Kennedy  asked  if  he  could  h 
dinner  in  a  private  room  along  with  lyricist  Alan  Jay  Lern 
then  New  York  mayor  Robert  Wagner,  and  Levin.  J.F.K.  hac 
glass  of  beer  and  cream  of  asparagus  soup. 

The  other  memorable  party  that  year  was  a  December 
dinner  at  which  new  members  were  inducted  into  the  Confre 
des  Chevaliers  du  Tastevin,  an  organization  dedicated  to  hypi 
the  wines  of  Burgundy.  Heralded  by  trumpeters  blaring  the  1 
umphal  March  from  A'ida,  the  organization's  officers  filed 
and  marched  around  the  room  in  a  procession  before  taki 
their  seats.  Guests  included  the  actress  Joan  Crawford,  Neim 
Marcus  chairman  Stanley  Marcus,  TV  Guide  founder  and 
collector  Walter  H.  Annenberg,  publisher  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
dustrial  designer  Raymond  Loewy,  philanthropist  Alice  Tul 
and  real-estate  developer  William  Zeckendorf  Jr. 

Each  course  was  elaborately  presented  on  a  dais  of  thick  I 
cite  set  over  the  pool.  The  turkey  soup  arrived  in  a  huge  turk< 
shaped  tureen  carried  by  two  men.  The  fish  course  was  preced 
by  a  mermaid-costumed  model  borne  on  a  platter  by  two  porte 
For  dessert,  a  gilded  tree  hung  with  chocolate  pears  was  p: 
sented  to  the  guests  so  that  each  could  pluck  his  own. 

For  the  fourth  course,  tourtes  feuilletees  filled  with  truffl 
quail,  Julia  Child  was  invited  to  donate  her  services  by  preps 
ing  the  pastry  shells,  which  required  one  sort  of  dough  for  f 
bottom  and  another  for  the  top.  "Working  in  that  kitchen  alo 
with  Jim  [Beard],  the  great  chef  Albert  Stockli,  and  the  magic  | 
pdtissier  Albert  Kumin  was  like  being  in  [the  1987  film]  Babett 
Feast,"  Child  recalls.  "It  took  a  whole  week." 

George  Lang,  then  head  of  special  projects  an 
later  director,  remembers  that  this  dinner  f 
235  cost  more  than  $20,000.  I  clearly  rec; 
Baum's  telling  me  that  it  cost  the  Chevalie 
organization  not  more  than  half  that  amour 
since  the  wines,  much  of  the  food,  and  tl 
services  and  premises  of  the  Four  Seasoi 
were  provided  gratis,  for  publicity.  It  was  th 
sort  of  largesse  at  such  high-profile  events  that  made  Restaura: 
Associates  and  the  Four  Seasons  famously  unprofitable,  eve 
with  a  reported  $30  million  in  annual  corporate  sales  and  a  19( 
public  stock  sale  of  about  one-third  of  the  company's  shares. 

Worse  was  yet  to  come,  for  both  R.A.  and  the  Four  Season 
After  buying  a  hotel  in  the  French  spa  town  of  Divonne-le 
Bains,  Jerome  Brody  spent  considerable  time  there  redevelopii 
the  property.  Meanwhile,  he  fell  in  love  with  Marlene  Gray,  h 
interpreter  and  assistant.  He  was  already  married,  however, 
Grace  Wechsler,  daughter  of  Abe  Wechsler,  one  of  the  prim 
pals  in  a  company  that  supplied  tea  and  continued  on  paoi   i 


AUGUST     199 


liter,  There's  a  Mogul  in  My  Soup!" 

jgulars  at  the  Four  Seasons  then  and  now 


Louis  Hagopian,  chairman, 

N.  W.  Ayer 
Pat  Soliman,  editor  in  chief, 

Coward,  McCann  & 

Geoghegan 
Jonathan  Dolger,  senior  editor, 

Harper  &  Row 
Bets  Myerson,  consumer 

advocate 
John  Geoghegan,  president, 

Coward,  McCann  & 

Geoghegan 
Lewis  Rudin,  real -estate 

developer 
Bruce  Gelb,  executive  vice 

president,  Bristol-Myers 
Roger  Straus  Jr.,  publisher, 

Farrar,  Straus  &  Giroux 
Betty  Prashlcer,  vice  president, 

Doubleday 
Mark  Goodson,  game-show 

producer 
!  Clay  Fellcer,  founder, 

New  York  magazine 
William  Bernbach,  chairman, 

Doyle  Dane  Bernbach 
Bill  Blass,  fashion  designer 
Nelson  Doubleday,  president, 

Doubleday 
i  John  Chancellor, 

NBC  anchorman 
Leonard  Garment,  lawyer 
Philip  Johnson,  architect 
Oscar  de  la  Renta, 

fashion  designer 
Michael  Korda,  editor  in  chief, 

Simon  &  Schuster 
Lois  Wyse,  writer,  president, 

Wyse  Advertising 
>  Mort  Janklow,  literary  agent 
Paul  Schlem,  retired  president, 

Gold  Seal  Vineyards 
Calvin  Klein,  fashion  designer 
',   Robert  H.  Montgomery  Jr., 

entertainment  lawyer 
1  James  Beard,  food  writer 
t  Alexis  Lichine,  wine  expert 
i    Edgar  M.  Bronfman,  chairman 

and  C.E.O.,  Seagram 

Company  Ltd. 


\<m 


ale 
ibei 

George  Weissman,  former  Philip 
Morris  chairman  and  chairman 
emeritus,  Lincoln  Center 

Martin  E.  Segal,  chairman 
emeritus,  Lincoln  Center 

Morton  Schroder,  real-estate 
broker 

Paul  Scherer,  managing  partner, 
Paul  Scherer  &  Company 


Stephen  A.  Schwarzman, 

president  and  C.E.O., 
the  Blackstone  Group 

4  Phyllis  Grann,  president,  25 

Penguin  Putnam 

5  Felix  Rohatyn,  U.S.  ambassador 

to  France 
James  Brady,  editor-at-large, 

Advertising  Age 
II    Lewis  Rudin,  real-estate 

developer 
Alan  Flusser,  men's  clothing 

designer 

12  Christopher  Meigher  III, 

chairman,  Meigher  26 

Communications 
W.  Randall  Jones,  C.E.O., 
Capital  Publishing 

13  Leonard  Lauder,  C.E.O., 

Estee  Lauder  27 

David  Dinkins,  former  mayor, 

New  York  City 
Ronald  Perelman,  chairman,  32 

Revlon 

16  Betty  Prashker,  editor-at-large, 

Crown  Publishers 
Brooke  Astor,  philanthropist  33 

17  Marvin  Traub,  retail  and 

fashion  consultant  and  former 
Bloomingdale's  C.E.O. 

22  Judith  Leiber,  handbag 

designer 
Bill  Blass,  fashion  designer  35 

Pierre  Berge,  chairman, 

Yves  Saint  Laurent 

23  Sanford  Weill,  co-chairman, 

Citigroup 


Arne  Glimcher,  president, 

Pace  Wildenstein;  film 

producer  and  director 
David  Brown,  film  producer 
Art  Buchwald,  columnist, 

humorist 
Abe  Rosenthal,  columnist, 

former  New  York  Times  editor 
Barbara  Walters,  ABC's 

co-anchor  of  20/20  and 

co -host  of  The  View 
Diane  Sawyer,  co-anchor 

of  ABC's  Good 

Morning  America 
Barry  Diller,  chairman  and 

C.E.O.,  USA  Networks 
Tom  Brokaw,  anchor, 

NBC  Nightly  News  with 

Tom  Brokaw 
Richard  Goldstein,  president 

and  C.E.O.,  Unilever 

United  States 
Philip  Johnson,  architect 
Charles  Bronfman,  co-chairman, 

Seagram  Company  Ltd. 
Art  Cooper,  editor  in  chief,  GQ 
Anna  Wintour,  editor  in  chief, 

Vogue 
Richard  Gelb,  chairman 

emeritus,  Bristol-Myers  Squibb 
Pete  Peterson,  chairman, 

the  Blackstone  Group 
Michael  Korda,  senior  vice 

president  and  editor  in  chief, 

Simon  &  Schuster 
Linda  Wachner,  chairman  and 

C.E.O.,  Warnaco  Group 


Mario  Cuomo,  former  governor, 
New  York  State 

36  Gianluigi  Gabetti, 

vice-chairman,  Fiat  S.P.A. 
John  Fairchild,  editor-at-large 

and  former  chairman, 

Fairchild  Publications 
Mort  Janklow,  literary  agent 

37  Edgar  M.  Bronfman,  chairman, 

Seagram  Company  Ltd. 
S.  I.  Newhouse  Jr.,  chairman, 

Conde  Nast  Publications 
Steve  Florio,  president  and 

C.E.O.,  Conde  Nast 

Publications 

41  Martha  Stewart,  chairman 

and  C.E.O.,  Martha  Stewart 
Living  Omnimedia 

42  Robert  H.  Montgomery  Jr., 

attorney,  Paul,  Weiss,  Rifkind, 
Wharton  &  Garrison 
Gladys  Nederlander, 
Nederlander  Television  &  Film 
Production 

43  Donald  Trump,  real-estate 

developer 
Gershon  Kekst,  president, 
Kekst  and  Co. 

44  Michael  Oviti,  founder, 

Artists  Management  Group 
William  Loverd,  head  of 
publicity,  Random  House 

45  Edgar  Bronfman  Jr.,  president 

and  C.E.O.,  Seagram 
Company  Ltd. 
David  Geffen,  partner, 
DreamWorks  SKG 


r 


*. 


1 


Fifty-five  tigers,  16  lioi 

and  the  fantasies  of  two  in 

German  boys — these  are  the 

key  ingredients  in  the  phenomenon 

of  Siegfried  and  Roy,  Las  Vegas's 

highest-paid  performers,  whose  500  sellout 

shows  a  year  at  Steve  Wynn's  Mirage  resort 

have  grossed  half  a  billion  dollars  over 

the  past  decade.  MATT  TYRNAUER  visits 

the  flamboyant  illusionists  amid  the 

cascading  waterfalls  and 

Sistine  Chapel-ceiling 

replicas  of  their  eight-acre 

Jungle  Palace,  to  look 

behind  the  liquid  smoke,  < 

lame,  and  lasers 


^~"""^* 


4 


► 


^§*' 


DARKNESS  AND  LIGHT 


Siegfried  Fischbacher  and 

Roy  Uwe  Ludwig  Horn 

,  at  rear,  and  Mantra, 

e  55  white  tigers  they 

igle  Palace,  their 

ne  in  Las  Vegas. 


H 


ihrough  a  long  plate-glass  window  in 
the  dining  room  of  the  Jungle  Palace,  their  fanciful  Moroccan- 
Mission-style  compound  in  West  Las  Vegas,  Siegfried  Fisch- 
bacher  and  Roy  Uwe  Ludwig  Horn— better  known  as  Siegfried 
and  Roy,  the  flamboyant  illusionists  whose  trademark  is  making 
exotic  beasts  vanish— watch  as  two  of  their  white  Himalayan 
tigers,  Shasadee  and  SiegRoy,  play  together  beneath  a  cascading 
waterfall  at  the  far  side  of  an  emerald-green  lawn.  "Look  at 
them!  Do  you  see  how  happy,  peaceful,  and  content  they  are?" 
asks  Siegfried  in  a  thick  Bavarian  accent  as  he  puffs  on  a  La 
Paz  cigarillo.  "You  know,  when  you  are  here  looking  at  them— 
so  majestic— after  a  hard  working  day  .  .  .  well,  it  just  changes 
your  life,"  he  says,  choking  with  emotion. 

"That's  right.  Whenever  anyone  comes  to  the  Jungle  Palace, 
they  say,  'I  want  to  be  reborn  as  a  white  tiger  of  Siegfried  and 
Roy,'"  says  Roy,  finishing  his  partner's  thought  in  a  Bremen  ac- 
cent that  is  even  thicker  than  Siegfried's. 

It  is  half  past  noon,  and  "the  boys,"  as  everyone  in  Las  Vegas 
calls  them— although  Siegfried,  the  blond  one,  is  60,  and  Roy  is 
54— are  just  getting  around  to  breakfast.  We  are  in  the  brightest, 
most  glorious  room  in  the  Palace— a  kind  of  solarium  that  affords 
sweeping  views  of  what  is  known  as  the  Garden  of  the  White 
Tigers:  an  eight-acre  park  dotted  with  palms  and  cypresses  that  is  a 
habitat  and  breeding  facility  for  the  animals  that  have  helped  make 
Siegfried  and  Roy,  in  the  words  of  Steve  Wynn,  owner  of  the  Mirage 
hotel,  where  they  perform,  "the  entertainment  cornerstone  of  Las 
Vegas,  and  the  most  important  single  act  in  town,  comparable  only 
to  Frank  Sinatra,"  and,  in  the  words  of  their  close  friend  Arnold 
Schwarzenegger,  "probably  the  hottest,  longest-lasting,  and  most 
spectacularly  successful  entertainers  in  the  world.  And  the  greatest 
immigration  story  I  know:  two  guys  who  came  over  to  this  country, 
starting  with  nothing,  who  have  made  their  dream  come  true." 

My  chance  to  interview  the  boys,  I  have  been  repeatedly  in- 
formed by  their  manager,  Bernie  Yuman,  is  a  rare  privilege,  for 
their  hectic  schedule— 500  performances  a  year  of  their  show  at 
the  Mirage's  1,504-seat  Siegfried  &  Roy  Theater  and  the  pro- 
duction of  a  biographical  Imax  3-D  movie  entitled  Siegfried  & 
Roy  and  the  Magic  Box,  which  is  out  next  month— makes  it  al- 
most impossible  for  them  to  interact  with  anyone  outside  of 
their  tight-knit  support  staff  of  several  dozen  animal  caretakers 
(trainers,  groomers,  vets),  38  personal  servants,  and  the  55  tigers 
and  16  lions  that  live  with  them  at  the  Jungle  Palace  and  at 
their  100-acre  "country"  estate,  Little  Bavaria,  located  at  the  foot 
of  Mt.  Charleston,  on  the  outskirts  of  town. 

Though  it's  early  by  Jungle  Palace  standards  (like  their  tigers, 
Siegfried  and  Roy  are  nocturnal  creatures),  both  men  are  nonethe- 


VANITY     FAIR 


"Your  love  has  to 

be  bigger  than  love,"  says 

Roy  of  their  animals, 

"because  they  are  like 

our  children." 


KINGS  OF  THE  DESERT 


Siegfried,  Roy.  and  five  of 

the  white  lions  of  limhavati  on  the 

uncultivated  outskirts  of  their 

100-acre  desert  compound.  Little 

Bavaria,  near  Las  Vegas. 


"Where  would  they  be  without  eaeh  other?'1  ask) 

Shirley  MaeLaine.  "Roy  with  an  ocelot  and  Siegfriei 

with  a  deck  of  cards— what  the  hell  is  that? 


less  perfectlj  kitted  and  groomed  for  the  day's  activities.  Siegfried 
is  wearing  a  black  leather  vest,  a  plaid  shirt,  and  pressed  jeans. 
Roy,  who  is  known  for  wearing  the  largest  codpiece  west  of  the 
Ruckies  onstage,  is  more  subtle  in  tight  jeans,  a  white  silk  T-shirt, 
and  a  white  Bachrach  cotton  shirt  worn  untucked.  A  large  gold 
cross  on  a  black  rope  hangs  from  his  neck.  Their  hair,  in  the  glar- 
ing light  of  day,  seems,  well,  important.  Every  strand  has  been 
fastidiously  gelled  into  place.  Siegfried's  pompadour  is  a  stiff,  shel- 
lacked butte;  Roy's  brown  tresses  are  spiked  and  a  bit  blonder  on 
top  than  on  the  sides. 

S  and  R  (as  close  associates  sometimes  call  them)  are  pleasing 
opposites— "darkness  and  light,"  as  they  like  to  put  it— and  their 
taut,  angular  faces  are  masterworks  wrought  by  a  brilliant  but  un- 
known Leonardo:  chiseled,  unblemished,  and  much  more  hand- 
some in  person  than  in  photographs.  Siegfried,  up  close,  possesses 
the  looks  of  an  aloof  Wagnerian  hero— or  Marlene  Dietrich  crossed 
with  a  lion;  it's  hard  to  decide.  Roy  is  a  dark  Eurasian  prince,  a 
mystic  who  each  morning  meditates  with  a  white  tiger  named 
Mantra,  and  has  what  both  casual  observers  and  experts  agree  is 
an  unprecedented,  almost  transcendental  rapport  with  animals— a 
connection  so  strong  that  he  believes,  with  the  firm  backing  of  his 
friend  Shirley  MaeLaine,  that  he  was  a  tiger  in  another  life. 

"You  have  to  understand  that  they  have  been  born  literally  in 
my  lap,"  Roy  tells  me  as  we  continue  to  observe  what  are  now 
four  white  tigers  at  play.  "I  am  their  stepfather,  their  guru.  I  am 
their  guide  through  the  world.  Wherever  I  am,  they  are  com- 
fortable, because  the  first  voice  they  hear  is  mine.  The  first  face 
they  see  is  mine.  So,  most  probably,  they  think  I  am  a  tiger." 

Until  the  cats  reach  the  age  of  one,  they  sleep  in  bed  with 
Roy.  He  feeds  them  from  a  bottle.  He  swims  with  them  every 
day  in  their  pool.  When  he  rises  in  the  morning,  he  strikes  a  six- 
foot  gong  to  tell  them  he  is  up.  "Your  love  has  to  be  bigger  than 
love,"  he  says,  "because  they  are  like  our  children." 

Even  Siegfried,  who  gets  along  very  well  with  the  tigers  (none 
of  which  is  declawed),  is  mystified  by  his  partner's  relationship 
with  them.  "I  respect  it,  I  am  awed  by  it.  I  enjoy  the  whole  thing. 
I  am  grateful  that  Roy  make  me  a  part  of  it,"  he  says,  but  he  em- 
phasizes that  there  is  a  division  of  labor:  Siegfried  is  in  charge  of 
the  illusions.  Roy  raises  the  animals.  That's  the  way  it  has  always 
been,  for  40  years,  and  that's  the  way  they  have  made  it  work. 

s  Shasadee  and  SiegRoy  continue  to  splash 
about  in  the  bright-blue  pool  at  the  center  of 
the  Garden  of  the  White  Tigers,  Nanette,  the 
Central  American  housekeeper,  enters  the 
dining  room  with  several  trays  of  cakes, 
baked  by  Roy's  mother,  who  lives  in  her 
own  mansion  just  outside  the  Jungle  Palace 
grounds.  (Tour  groups,  who  buzz  by  the 
compound  several  times  a  day,  can  easily  distinguish  the  Palace 
from  Mrs.  Horn's  residence  thanks  to  the  enormous  gold  "SR" 
logotypes  on  the  Palace  gates  and  the  white  Rolls-Royce  parked 
in  the  driveway,  with  license  plates  that  read  sarmoti— an 


acronym  for  Siegfried  and  Roy  Masters  of  me  impossible -tl 
special  word  Siegfried  and  Roy  use  in  their  show  as  a  synony 
for  "abracadabra"  and  in  life  as  a  salutation,  like  "ciao.") 

As  we  take  our  seats  at  an  oblong  glass  table  set  with  Christis 
Dior  tiger-pattern  china,  Roy  asks  Nanette  to  light  all  of  the  ca 
dies  in  the  room— a  request  that,  for  some  reason,  displeasi 
Siegfried,  who  immediately  orders  the  candles  extinguished.  "B 
Mr.  Roy  wants  them  lit!"  Nanette  protests.  (After  a  brief  discn 
sion  between  Siegfried  and  Roy— in  German— they  are  re-lit.) ' 
one  side  of  the  table,  there  is  a  large  marble  Jacuzzi.  The  ceiling- 
frescoed  with  a  replica  of  Michelangelo's  handiwork  in  the  Sistii 
Chapel.  At  the  rear  of  the  dining  room,  near  a  towering  coppi 
espresso  machine,  is  what  appears  to  be  a  mahogany  church  co 
fessional  (emblazoned  with  the  SR  logo),  though  later  in  the  day 
discover  that  this  is,  in  fact,  a  cleverly  disguised  powder  room  (b 
hind  the  priest's  door)  and  china  closet  (on  the  confessor's  side). 

Just  as  Cristal  champagne  is  being  uncorked  and  pastries  are  b 
ing  served  (mit  Schlag:  both  S  and  R  have  done  their  rounds  at  tr 
gym  today),  we  are  joined  by  Bernie  Yuman,  Siegfried  and  Roy 
manager  of  almost  25  years.  Highly  aggressive  and  overly  prote 
tive,  Yuman  often  refers  to  himself  as  "the  ampersand  in  Siegfrie 
&  Roy,"  and  serves  as  a  buffer  between  his  charges  and  all  that 
quotidian.  ("They  think  it  all  just  falls  into  place  for  them,"  Yuma 
whispers  to  me  at  one  point.  "They  don't  even  know  or  see  what 
do.  But  that's  the  job  of  Bernie  Yuman— to  make  it  all  look  easy.' 

Mr.  Bernie  Yew-maan,  as  Siegfried  refers  to  him,  is  the  Jung 
Palace's  jack-of-all-trades.  With  a  pager  constantly  beeping  an 
a  StarTac  glued  to  his  ear,  he  is  perpetually  working  the  weight 
levers  of  the  Siegfried  and  Roy  celebrity-publicity  machine,  fun< 
tioning  as  a  combination  gatekeeper-business  manager-publicis 
On  one  hand,  he  is  guardian  of  what  Siegfried  and  Roy's  frien 
MaeLaine  calls  "the  boys'  cloistered  world  of  magical  perfo 
mance,  the  hermetically  sealed  bubble  in  which  they  live  ILk 
two  rare  orchids  in  their  Shangri-la,"  cut  off  from  almost  all  r< 
ality,  two  glorious  self-inventions,  "striding  and  strutting  aroun 
as  if  the  world  literally  is  their  stage."  On  the  other  hand,  it  B 
Yuman's  responsibility  to  promote  the  unique  franchise  that  hi 
two  clients  have  painstakingly  built  up  over  40  years  in  sho\ 
business— 40  years  that  have  brought  them,  in  Roy's  word; 
from  "the  bleakness  of  Germany  after  the  Second  World  Wa 
where  we  had  nothing  to  eat  and  no  education,"  to,  in  Yuman 
words,  "the  very  pinnacle  of  entertainment,  the  top  of  the  heat 
where  they  are  the  stars  of  the  highest-grossing  live  entertainmer 
spectacle  in  the  history  of  the  world." 

Although  white  tigers  frolicking  in  pools,  a  magic  show  o 
the  Las  Vegas  Strip,  and  middle-aged  men  who  call  their  ornat 
ranch  house  a  palace  may  seem  frivolous— a  little  Liberace,  t 
put  it  in  the  appropriate  local  parlance— the  big  business  behin<J 
Siegfried  and  Roy  is  very  serious  indeed. 

Their  elaborate  production,  which  the  Las  Vegas-based  culturl 
critic  Dave  Hickey  describes  as  "a  seamless  . . .  conflation  of  Wag" 
ner,  Barnum,  Houdini,  Rousseau,  Pink  Floyd,  Fantasia,  Peter  Pari 
and  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  is  not  your  run-of-the-mill  Lai 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     l  9  9 


i\i* 


YS  IN  THE  BUBBLE 

chvise  from  above:  Siegfried  and 
perform  their  "balloon  illusion" 
tage  al  the  Siegfried  &  Koy  1'heater  at 
Mirage  hotel  in  Las  Vegas;  with 
co  the  cheetah  at  Monte  Carlo's  Gala 
Kois,  circa  1967;  the  "Amazon"  scene 
ii  their  show;  in  the  Jungle  Palace 
I  with  Leo,  1 982;  Roy,  blindfolded,  on 
into,  his  Andalusian  stallion,  at  Little 
aria;  with  Pope  .John  Paul  II  at 
Vatican,  1986;  with  Shirley  MacLaine, 
istmas  1984;  with  Michael  Jackson  and 
e  tiger  cubs  on  January  12,  1988. 


^B     i               7  .  t"  ■ 

of  an  aloof  Wagnerian  hero- 


a  lion;  its  hard  to  decide. 


Mi 


W 


KEjft&'i,          ^*M^m 

F    IV 

HBB^l., 

HI     ' 

BB^^5 

^ ■ 

«f 


srfriedd  Roy  at  tlw  Mirage  (the  official  title)  is 
i  choreographed,  high-tech  extravaganza  thai 

the  illusionists  in  collaboration  with  the  Tony 
production  designer  John  Napier  (who  did  Cats 
i  and  writer-director  John  Caird  of  the  Royal 
Company.  The  slum  winch  Napier  tags  "Marvel 
meets  the  Met"  debuted  almost  a  decade  ago  and  cost  an 
astonishing  $60  million  to  produce  (including  the  construction  of 
the  custom-designed  Siegfried  &  Roy  Theater,  which  has  a  domed 
stage  big  enough  to  house  a  DC-10).  Since  its  opening  on  February 
1.  1990.  it  has  been  "sold  out  at  104  percent  for  every  show  at  S90 
a  seat,"  according  to  Yuman,  who  says  the  show's  cumulative  gross 
over  nine  years  is  more  than  half  a  billion  dollars.  The  show's  pro- 
ducer, Kenneth  Feld,  C.E.O.  of  Feld  Entertainment,  which  oper- 
ates the  Ringling  Bros,  and  Barnum  &  Bailey  Circus,  claims  that  it 
is  "the  most  popular  and  lucrative  production  in  the  history  of  Las 

Vegas There  are  no  live  performers  today  who  can  draw  over 

700,000  people  a  year  except  Siegfried  and  Roy." 

For  their  proven  star  power  (thousands  are  turned  away  from 
the  box  office  every  day),  as  well  as  their  all-consuming  profes- 
sionalism ("They  have  no  life  except  for  these  performances,"  says 
Wynn.  "Their  schedule,  with  the  animals  on  their  backs,  so  to 
speak,  is  relentless"),  Siegfried  and  Roy  are  very  well  compensat- 
ed. Forbes  magazine  reports  that  they  are  the  highest-paid  enter- 
tainers in  Las  Vegas  history,  earning  an  estimated  $58  million  in 
1996-97  (with  an  estimated  net  worth  of  more  than  $100  million). 
On  the  Forbes  ranking  of  entertainers'  salaries  for  1997,  they  are 
No.  19,  sandwiched  between  Mel  Gibson  and  Sting.  And,  accord- 
ing to  Wynn,  Siegfried  and  Roy  deserve  much  of  the  credit  for  the 
extraordinary  success  of  his  $650  million  Mirage  hotel  (the  most 
profitable  resort  property  in  the  world,  Wynn  says),  where  they 
have  been  the  anchor  attraction  since  its  opening  day. 

"When  we  were  getting  ready  to  build  the  Mirage  in  1988, 
Siegfried  and  Roy  was  the  safest  show  we  could  pick  for  our  en- 
tertainment facility,  because  they  were  already  the  all-time  great- 
est attendance  attraction  in  Las  Vegas  history,"  Wynn  tells  me. 
"By  orders  of  magnitude,  nobody  has  ever  drawn  the  kind  of  at- 
tendance that  they  have.  Really,  in  terms  of  the  numbers  of  peo- 
ple who  have  witnessed  the  act,  nothing  has  come  close— Elvis, 
Frank  Sinatra,  Martin  and  Lewis,  Steve  and  Eydie,  and  Wayne 
Newton  all  put  together  don't  approach  Siegfried  and  Roy. 

"When  Elvis  Presley  used  to  work  in  Las  Vegas  two  months 
a  year,  he  had  empty  seats.  These  boys  don't,"  Wynn  contin- 
ues. "I  mean,  at  our  place  for  eight  years,  we're  talking  about 
15,000  people  a  week,  700,000  people  a  year.  And  then,  of 
course,  there  was  a  complete  history  with  these  gents  at  the 
MGM,  at  the  Stardust,  and  at  the  Frontier  before  us.  These  are 
20-odd  years  of  full-capacity  attendance  on  a  regular  basis. 
Anyone  who  thinks  they  can  do  what  Siegfried  and  Roy  have 
done  should  go  ahead  and  try— it's  almost  impossible." 

Siegfried  puts  a  fresh  cigarillo  between  his  perfect- 
ly capped  teeth,  and  Nanette  rushes  forward  with 
a  sterling-silver  lighter  to  light  it. 
Roy  is  now  running  around  outside  telling 
the  animal  attendants  what  to  do.  I  can  see 
him  through  the  window,  in  the  middle  of  the 
lawn,  cuddling  with  a  black  panther  named 
Macumba  (this  same  animal,  he  tells  me  later, 
nearly  castrated  him  in  a  fit  of  pique  10  years  ago;  they've 
since  made  up).  If  it  were  not  for  my  presence  at  the  Jungle 


Palace  today,  Roy  says,  "the  animals  would  roam  free— it 
not  a  problem." 

Siegfried  takes  me  on  a  tour  of  his  wing  of  the  house 
which  is  just  off  the  dining  room.  Roy's  rooms  are  upstair: 
With  Yuman  a  few  paces  behind  us,  Siegfried  leads  me  int 
his  bedroom  suite,  positions  me  at  the  center  of  the  airy  stuccc 
walled  chamber,  and  instructs  me  to  look  up.  Gesturing  towar 
a  Baroque  fresco  on  the  dome  and  walls,  he  announces,  "Thi 
is  the  young  Siegfried,  when  I  was  in  my  youthful  days!" 

The  life-size  image  is  that  of  a  perfectly  formed  nude  bo 
toy,  leading  two  fierce  cheetahs  on  a  chain  through  a  desolat 
moonscape.  "And  what  happens  is  Merlin  is  with  the  evil,  an 
Siegfried  is  the  power  and  the  strength  and  the  good  magic, 
he  explains,  pointing  out  the  Arthurian  wizard,  who,  in  th 
company  of  a  hydra-headed  serpent,  is  shooting  fire  from  hi 
fingertip  at  the  young  Aryan  hero.  "Black  magic  against  whit 
magic.  In  other  words,  the  evil  spirit  against  the  good  spirit.' 

"What's  that  enormous  crystal  you  are  holding?"  I  ask. 

"It  is  the  power  of  life  and  light.  It's  nothing  special,"  he  cor 
eludes,  exhaling  a  cloud  of  blue  cigarillo  smoke. 

I  note  that  the  young  Siegfried  looks  not  much  different  fron 
the  present-day  Siegfried.  He  shrugs.  "Well,  the  painter  got  a  lil 
tie  carried  away." 

The  free-form  mythology  exhibited  in  this  mural  is  exactly  th 
kind  of  operatic  stuff  that  Siegfried  and  Roy's  show  is  made  o 
Onstage,  playing  themselves  as  elaborately  costumed  supei 
heroes  in  lame  capes  and  silver  space  suits,  they  are  the  audi 
ence's  emissaries  into  an  imaginary  dreamscape,  where  the; 
successfully  battle  the  forces  of  a  rather  sketchily  defined  "evi 
empire,"  led  by  a  wicked  blonde  sorceress  and  a  four-story-tal 
fire-breathing  dragon.  In  the  midst  of  these  unfolding  scenes 
each  one  brimming  with  complex  stagecraft,  liquid  smoke,  anc 
lasers— 24  tigers  and  eight  lions  vanish  and  reappear,  as  d( 
Siegfried,  Roy,  an  Arabian  horse,  and  an  elephant. 

The  most  spectacular  illusions  are  the  ones  based  on  meta 
morphosis,  and  most  stunning  of  all  is  what's  called  "th( 
Death-Defying  Crystal  Chamber,"  wherein  the  writhing  sor 
ceress  is  slowly  lowered  from  the  rafters  in  a  huge  transparen 
box;  then,  after  some  taunting  through  the  Plexiglas  by  Roy 
she  is— poof!— transformed  into  a  700 -pound  white  tiger  b) 
Siegfried.  The  tiger  is  then  marched  along  a  pasarela  into  the 
audience  by  Roy,  only  to  be  reloaded  into  the  crystal  cham 
ber,  sent  aloft,  and  then  "vanished"  as  the  chamber  flie< 
apart  in  midair.  The  sorceress  then  reappears,  and  is  trans 
formed  into  Roy. 

"Our  show,"  says  Siegfried  as  we  make  our  way  out  ol 
the  bedroom  to  rejoin  Roy  in  the  dining  room,  "is  aboul 
our  dreams  and  fantasies.  It  is  the  realization  of  40  years  ol 
fantasy." 

If  one  were  to  reduce  Siegfried  &  Roy  at  the  Mirage  down 
to  its  basic  dramatic  arc,  it  would  be  a  kind  of  hallucinogenic 
"buddy  picture."  In  an  analytic  essay  called  "Lost  Boys,' 
Dave  Hickey  describes  the  show  this  way:  "The  illusions  are 
those  of  peril  and  rescue;  Siegfried  is  fed  to  the  dragon  anc 
emerges  unscathed;  Roy  is  impaled  by  the  dragon  and  resur- 
rected by  Siegfried;  both  Siegfried  and  Roy  are  apparently 
crushed  in  the  dragon's  claws  only  to  reappear,  swinging  tri 
umphantly  out  over  the  audience  on  ropes,  a  la  Peter  Pan. 
These  are  all  rituals  of  friendship." 

Roy  agrees.  "Yes,"  he  says,  "that's  what  our  show  is  about — 
You  see,  Siegfried  and  I  are  living  a  modern  poem!  A  fairy 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199' 


"When  Elvis  worked  in  Las  Vegas,  he  had  empty  seatsj 

says  Steve  Wynn.  'These  boys  dont 


^^*» 


IE  BOYS 

v  and  Siegfried  at 
ttle  Bavaria,  near  \ 

s  Vegas.  "We  are  married 
our  profession.  We  are  / 
irried  to  what  we  belief, 
d  we  are  married  to 
!  whole  substance  of  our 
ings,"  says  Roy. 


■ 


i  enturj  \nd  we  al- 
tory  o!  oui  lives,  be- 

.  ,.  mils  it's  very  eccen- 
iybe  it's  a  little  crazy, 

ij    iegfried  and  Roy!" 

(.TV/iKu-  would  they  be  without  each 

W  other?"  asks  Shirley  MacLaine,  who 
has  been  a  friend  of  Siegfried  and  Roy's  for 
two  decades,  since  the  days  when  she  played 
the  Desert  Inn  and  they  were  the  headliners 
for  the  topless  Lido  revue  at  the  Stardust. 
"It  would  be  Roy  with  an  ocelot  and  Sieg- 
fried with  a  deck  of  magic  cards.  I  mean, 
what  the  hell  is  that?" 

That,  actually,  is  more  or  less  the  way 
things  started,  once  upon  a  time  way  back 
when.  They  met— as  people  used  to  say  in  Hol- 
lywood—cute. On  an  ocean  liner.  They  were 
both  lonely  children  from  unhappy  families, 
whose  fathers  had  been  Nazi  soldiers.  They 
were  both  escaping  miserable  home  lives, 
shattered  by  the  war,  rigid,  abusive,  loveless. 

The  ship  was  the  Bremen,  which  plied  the 
North  Atlantic  between  Bremerhaven  and 
New  York.  The  year,  1960.  Siegfried,  then  21, 
was  a  first-class  steward  with  a  part-time  job  as 
the  ship's  magician.  Roy,  15,  was  the  personal 
bellboy  to  the  captain.  Delmare  the  Magician, 
as  Siegfried  called  himself,  ate  razor  blades 
and  lightbulbs  in  his  act.  He  also  made  rabbits 
and  doves  disappear,  and  for  that  he  needed 
an  assistant.  Roy's  cabin  was  across  from  his, 
and  soon  the  bellboy  became  part  of  the  act. 

One  evening  after  the  show,  when  they 
were  having  a  drink  in  the  bar,  Roy  asked 
Siegfried  a  fateful  question:  "If  you  can  make 
rabbits  and  doves  appear  and  disappear, 
could  you  do  the  same  thing  with  a  chee- 
tah?" Siegfried  replied,  "In  magic  anything 
is  possible."  In  their  autobiography,  Master- 
ing the  Impossible,  Siegfried  recalls,  "I  wasn't 
about  to  let  this  wiseguy  think  otherwise. 
Who  knew  he  had  a  pet  cheetah?  Or  that 
he'd  be  so  bold  as  to  suggest  that  I  incorpo- 
rate his  animal  into  my  show!" 

However,  on  the  next  voyage,  Roy,  who  had 
saved  his  pet,  Chico,  from  the  Bremen  Zoo, 
where  his  uncle  was  a  director,  smuggled  the 
creature  aboard.  And  on  that  crossing  the 
course  of  theatrical  illusion  was  forever  altered. 

"In  show  business,  in  order  to  be  success- 
ful you  have  to  be  different,"  Siegfried  says 
today.  "And  when  Roy  showed  me  that  chee- 
tah, it  made  all  the  difference. ...  I  can  tell 
you  this:  when  I  disappear  from  the  lounge 
of  that  ship  in  the  middle  of  the  ocean,  and 
reappear  as  a  cheetah,  this  is  better  than  pull- 
ing rabbits  out  of  a  hat.  Yes,  me  and  Roy,  we 
are  on  our  way.  It  is  better  than  anything." 

They  toured  Europe  in  a  Citroen  as  Sieg- 
fried and  Partner— Bremen,  Cannes,  Barce- 
lona, Geneva,  Lausanne,  Nice,  Madrid.  They 
performed  in  smoky  cabarets  alongside  strip- 
tease acts,  and  indignities  were  abundant. 
At  Berlin's  Eden-Saloon,  one  insulting  poster 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


read  i  oko  sei   mi  1 1  roi  ioi  s  i  m<  o!  hi 

will.  DA//I I  VOU!  No  mention  of  the  chee- 
tah's partners.  Eventually  they  arrived  in 
Paris,  and  their  big  break  was  to  perform  in 
the  Folies  Bergere,  where  they  developed 
and  line-tuned  the  concepts  which  form  the 
basis  of  their  act  to  this  day:  metamorphic 
illusions  with  giant  cats  done  at  great  speed. 

"All  illusions  are  derived  from  five  basic 
ideas:  appearance,  disappearance,  transfor- 
mation, levitation,  and  sawing,"  says  Sieg- 
fried. "The  challenge  for  a  magician  is  to  put 
these  principles  into  his  own  wrapping  or 
adapt  them  to  his  given  situation." 

From  the  Folies  Bergere  they  went  direct- 
ly to  Las  Vegas.  "When  we  arrived,"  recalls 
Siegfried,  "entertainment  had  not  yet  evolved 
from,  uh,  how  do  you  say  it  . . .  ?" 

"T&A,"  says  Roy. 

"Yes,  thank  you  very  much,  T&A.  It  was 
a  gambler's  town,  pure  and  simple,  and  the 
Rat  Pack  was  in  charge— Frank  Sinatra,  Dean 
Martin,  Sammy  Davis  Jr.  Entertainment 
was  no  more  than  just  a  rest  period  between 
gambling  sessions— you  know,  bring  on  the 
scantily  clad  showgirls,  strike  up  the  band, 
tell  some  jokes,  ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-boom,  you've 
got  a  show." 

In  the  intervening  years,  thanks  to  Sieg- 
fried and  Roy,  that  has  all  changed. 

"When  the  only  things  that  were  really 
playing  in  Las  Vegas  were  recycled  French 
production  shows  and  big  stars,  Siegfried 
and  Roy  carved  their  own  niche  here,"  says 
Wynn.  "Before  them  it  was  topless  women 
marching  up  and  down  a  staircase,  and  that 
was  a  stale  concept  that  should  have  gone 
out  in  the  50s."  They  were  the  first  to  "cov- 
er" their  showgirls  and  encourage  parents  to 
bring  children.  "We  never  understood  the  fas- 
cination anyway  with  topless  women  in  the 
shows,"  says  Siegfried.  And  in  many  respects 
they  anticipated  Wynn's  makeover  of  Las  Ve- 
gas into  a  family  resort.  "Respectfully,"  says 
Yuman,  "when  Siegfried  and  Roy  started  the 
nonnude  show,  everybody  in  the  city  saw  that 
families  poured  in.  And  they  may  remain 
nameless,  but  every  single  entrepreneur  and 
every  C.E.O.  that  owns  and  operates  these 
megabillion-dollar  resorts  here,  they  took  no- 
tice of  that And  remember,  Siegfried  and 

Roy  were  told  that  magic  didn't  work  in  Las 
Vegas  when  they  first  got  here.  After  them, 
every  show  had  a  magician.  I  mean,  there  are 
Elvis  impersonators  everywhere,  there  are 
Siegfried  and  Roy  impersonators  everywhere. 
Recently  I  took  a  whirlwind  tour  to  look  at 
some  shows.  I  went  to  Majorca,  and  in  Ma- 
jorca there  is  a  Siegfried  and  Roy  knockoff. 
They  have  golden  tigers,  one  of  them  is  blond 
and  the  other  one  is  dark  with  a  cross,  and 
the  same  mannerisms  and  movements." 

As  they  grew  rich  and  famous,  the  even 
richer  and  more  famous  queued  up  to  see 
them.  Every  president  since  Carter  has  wit- 
nessed the  show.  At  Clinton's  photo  op  with 


Siegfried  and  Roy  in  1998,  Secret  Scrvic 
sharpshooters  trained  rifles  on  the  tigerj 
Pope  John  Paul  II  received  Siegfried  and  Rcj 
at  the  Vatican;  they  got  a  splinter  of  St.  Franc 
of  Assisi's  shinbone  from  him.  Michael  Eisnt 
has  seen  the  show  12  times.  Michael  Jackso 
wrote  their  theme,  "Mind  Is  the  Magic 
Elizabeth  Taylor  admires— even  envies— then 
"They  have  such  confidence,  and  walk  wit 
grace— like  dancers  almost,"  she  tells  m 
"They  are  not  show-offs,  and  I  think  it  is  b 
cause  of  their  intensity  with  the  animals— thi 
is  where  their  star  is  shining.  It's  a  feeling  < 
power  without  conceit.  And  the  audienc 
loves  them  back.  I  just  wish  I  could  crawl  ii 
side  their  skin  and  become  part  of  a  tiger!" 

Siegfried  and  Roy  say  that  the  two  mo: 
important  things  in  their  lives  are  their  ai 
imals  and  their  audience.  They  rarely  lea* 
Las  Vegas  and  seem  to  have  very  little  sens 
of  the  world  beyond  their  reach.  "You  hav 
to  give  up  a  lot  of  freedom,"  says  Roy  durin 
a  lunchtime  interview  at  the  rustic,  thatchec 
roof  house  at  Little  Bavaria,  their  estate  o 
the  edge  of  Las  Vegas,  where  German  marcl 
ing  music  is  piped  in  over  hidden  speaker; 
Beluga  caviar  and  chocolate-dipped  straw 
berries  are  served.  "Yes,  it  is  lonely  at  th 
top,"  he  continues,  "but  my  animals  are  sue 
that  when  I  get  home  at  night  to  the  Jungl 
Palace  it  is  a  very  peaceful  surroundings. 

gives  me  sanity After  a  show  it  feels  lik 

good  sex,  and  I  actually  bask  in  the  fan  mail 
after  I  come  home."  Fan  letters  numbe 
10,000  a  month,  some  addressed  simply  "Siej 
fried  and  Roy,  Las  Vegas."  Hits  on  their  Wei 
site,  www.sarmoti.com,  average  700,000  pe 
month.  Siegfried  and  Roy  are  also  deeply  in 
grained  in  popular  culture.  On  The  Simpsons 
they  are  parodied  as  Ernst  and  Gunter.  Ii 
Martin  Scorsese's  1995  film,  Casino,  they  wer 
portrayed  as  Jonathan  and  David.  Yet  whei 
I  bring  up  these  references  to  them  in  TV  an< 
movies,  they  seem  to  be  unaware  of  them 

One  thing  that  has  reached  them  is  i 
prevalent  (especially  in  Hollywood)  rumo 
that  Roy  perished  some  years  ago  of  aids  anc 
was  replaced  by  a  surgically  modified  brothe 
named  Ray.  Shirley  MacLaine  says  she  hean 
the  rumor  "so  often  from  all  my  Vegas  bud 
dies,  and  I  had  been  away  for  some  time,  sc 
it  began  to  really  worry  me— especially  wher 
one  person  said  they'd  gone  to  the  funeral!' 

The  story  is  pure  bunkum,  according  t( 
Siegfried  and  Roy.  "Do  you  think  I  would  g( 
through  with  a  new  one  what  I  went  througl 
with  this  one?"  asks  Siegfried  with  a  wave  o 
a  caviar  spoon  when  I  ask  them  about  it.  We 
are  in  the  parlor  of  the  Little  Bavaria  house 
A  Duraflame  log  is  burning  in  the  fireplace 

"You  met  my  brother,"  Roy  adds,  "so  yoi 
know  who  is  my  brother."  (His  older  sibling 
Werner,  is  a  groundskeeper  at  Little  Bavaria 
Roy  has  one  other  brother,  who  is  an  entre- 
preneur in  Ireland.)  "But  that  rumor  I  have 

AUGUST     199 


,ard.  I  think  it  is  because  I  am  a  very  fast- 
d-furious-moving  person,  and  I  have  con- 
i  jitly,  like  a  chameleon,  changed  my  images. 
jgfried,  on  the  other  hand,  as  long  as  I 
ow  him,  hasn't  changed  his  haircut  or  any- 
jig  else.  I  am  adventurous.  I  try  everything 
ce  in  life.  I  think  it  is  good  to  be  versatile." 
Many  other  presumed  facts  about  Siegfried 
d  Roy  also  go  unaddressed  by  them,  simply 
cause,  according  to  MacLaine,  "they  are  so 
ermanically  naive.  It's  like  they  are  living  in 
j  Germany,  where  one  would  never  do  such 
,ings  as  ask  about  one's  life!  The  way  they 
•al  with  the  perception  of  them  as  a  couple 

as  much  sleight  of  hand  as  their  act I 

ean,  they  used  to  be  lovers  a  long  time  ago, 
ah?  In  this  day  and  age,  who  cares?" 
Clearly  the  boys  do.  When  I  ask  them  if 
ey  are  or  were  a  couple,  or  if  they  had  been 
arried  on  board  the  Bremen— as  a  billionaire 
itertainment  mogul  swore  to  me  they  had 
sen— their  reaction  is  one  of  shock.  Siegfried 
;ts  tense,  muttering  under  his  breath,  "Oh, 
iy  God."  Roy  says,  "That's  a  new  one!  So, 
guess  the  public  is  intrigued,  huh?" 
"Listen,"  says  Siegfried,  supporting  his  jaw 
ith  a  fist.  "When  we  were  on  the  ship,  at 
tat  time,  if  you  had  just  mentioned  we  had 
at  married,  they  would  have  thrown  us  off 
te  ship,  you  know  what  I  mean?"  After  a 
ause,  he  adds,  "What  can  I  tell  you?  Many 
eople  say,  'Oh,  Siegfried  and  Roy,  this  is  al- 
lost  like  a  marriage,  and  the  animals  are  the 
ids.'  . . .  Well,  what  Roy's  private  life  was  is 
ot  my  business;  what  my  private  life  was 
my  business.  You  understand?  Roy  is  his 
ivn  man,  and  I  am  my  own  man.  And  Sieg- 
ied  and  Roy,  who  are  friends,  respect  each 
ther  and  went  there  without  being  married." 
Roy's  response  is  softer,  slightly  New  Age. 
But  we  are  married,"  he  says.  "We  are  mar- 
ed  to  our  profession.  We  are  married  to 
hat  we  believe,  and  we  are  married  to  the 
hole  substance  of  our  beings.  I  mean,  I 
ave  a  family— not  only  of  humans,  but  of 
limals.  I  feel  that  I  am  part  of  a  family  in 
iany,  many  ways." 

"So  you  go  deeper  and  say  what  is  going 
a  in  my  bedroom  and  in  Roy's  bedroom?" 
tys  Siegfried.  "I  don't  care.  I  don't  know.  I 
11  you  this  because  this  is  me,  and  I  wouldn't 
>k  you  what  you  do  with  your  dick,  either." 
"But-"  I  start. 

"Ifs  and  buts  don't  exist!"  says  Roy. 
I  continue.  "Do  you  realize  that  Siegfried 
id  Roy  are  perceived,  if  not  as  lovers,  as 
omosexual  icons?" 

This  news  seems  to  genuinely  puzzle  them. 
"A  cult  figure?  A  cult?"  asks  Siegfried. 
"Icons,"  I  repeat. 

"Gay  icons?  For  these  people?  Well,  I  am 
;ry  honored,"  says  Siegfried,  having  ab- 
)rbed  the  information.  "In  my  life  I  have  a 
it  of  friends  who  are  gay,  and  I  made  a  lot 
f  friends  in  show  business,  and  I  found  out 
lat  they  are  always  interesting,  intelligent. 


and  good  people,  and  fun  to  be  with.  They 
are  very  open-minded.  They  are  not  narrow- 
minded.  If  I  am  an  icon  to  them,  it  is  won- 
derful, because  gay  people  are  always  very 

loyal And,  you  know,  when  you  go  back 

in  history,  there  are  great  names  in  the  arts 
and  in  every  field,  so  be  my  guest." 

Roy  adds,  "They  are  very  generous!  And 
I  think  it  is  a  wonderful  thing,  because  I 
care  for  everybody  in  the  public.  Everybody 
is  an  audience  to  me. . . .  And  I  am  flattered 
to  think  that  people  think  that  I  am  versa- 
tile. You  don't  have  to  define  everything, 
and  I  don't  want  to  disillusion  people.  Be- 
sides, I'm  not  a  guy  who  kisses  and  tells." 

It's  dusk  at  Little  Bavaria.  Roy,  Siegfried, 
Yuman,  and  I  take  a  walk  around  the 
grounds,  which  are  kept  green  by  water 
pumped  from  an  aquifer  under  the  desert 
floor.  The  animals  are  being  fed— white  pea- 
cocks, a  donkey,  goats  that  were  a  gift  from 
David  Lee  Roth.  Several  white  tigers  are  laz- 
ing about  near  a  man-made  pond.  Also  on 
view  are  the  white  lions  of  Timbavati,  which 
Siegfried  and  Roy  have  recently  started  to 
breed  in  a  joint  program  with  the  Cincinnati 
Zoo,  the  institution  from  which  Roy  re- 
ceived his  first  white  tigers  more  than  15 
years  ago.  He  says  he  hopes  one  day  to  re- 
turn the  tigers  to  their  homeland  in  Nepal, 
but  there  are  no  firm  plans  to  do  that. 

Questions  about  Siegfried  and  Roy's  retire- 
ment have  recently  been  raised  in  Las  Vegas. 
Their  current  contract  ends  in  2002.  I  ask 
Steve  Wynn  what  he  would  do  if  they  chose  to 
retire.  "One  of  the  things  I  dread  the  most  is 
ever  having  to  replace  them,"  he  says.  "They've 
been  on  such  a  relentless  schedule  their  entire 
lives,  you  can't  be  sure  of  what  their  attitude 
will  be  in  2002.  These  men  are  in  such  a 
groove  with  the  work  that  I  am  not  sure  they 
have  fully  embraced  the  idea  of  stopping  it.  I'd 
support  them  in  anything  they  do,  because  we 
are  so  close.  I  tried  to  get  them  to  make  a  de- 
cision, and  they  couldn't.  So  I'll  make  a  con- 
tingency plan  until  the  last  possible  second, 
and  then  there  will  come  a  moment  when  the 
boys  will  really  have  to  square  off  on  that." 

Siegfried  and  Roy  will  not  reveal  their  fu- 
ture plans,  but  it  is  clear  that  their  recent- 
ly finished  movie  has  them  in  a  reflective 
mood— especially  the  scenes  on  the  Bremen, 
in  which  they  are  played  by  young  actors.  "It 
is  interesting,"  says  Roy,  "to  look  into  the 
window  of  your  past,  looking  into  the  win- 
dow of  today  and  actually  looking  into  the 
window  of  tomorrow.  That's  what  the  movie 
does  for  us.  It  is  the  window  of  our  lives." 

"Now,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life," 
adds  Siegfried,  "I  came  out  of  filming  18 
hours  a  day  on  the  set  and  I  went  home 
and  said,  'Oh,  my  God.'  I  realized  what  I 
had  done  in  these  decades!  It  is  not  an 
accident  that  things  happen.  It  is  so  poet- 
ic—you know,  you  cannot  do  it  like  the 


life  story  of  Tina  Turner.  It  is  Imax  3-D." 
Bret  Leonard,  the  director  of  Siegfried  & 
Roy  and  the  Magic  Box,  says  the  movie  is 
meant  to  be  "a  sort  of  poetic,  spiritual  jour- 
ney," not  "simply  a  'concert'  movie  about 
some  big  Vegas  extravaganza. 

"What  is  wonderful  is  that  Siegfried  and 
Roy  have  a  simple,  poetic  story  to  tell," 
Leonard  continues.  "It's  really  an  adventure 
story  about  two  kids  coming  from  different 
parts  of  Germany,  one  having  a  dream  of 
magic,  the  other  having  a  dream  of  animals, 
and,  through  destiny,  being  brought  together. 
So,  in  a  sense,  we  are  telling  this  epic  poem 
of  their  lives,  which,  because  of  the  animals 
and  the  illusions,  is  very  appropriate  for  the 
largest  pictures  you  can  have  on  the  planet, 
eight-story-tall  Imax  3-D." 

Siegfried  &  Roy  and  the  Magic  Box  is 
plainly  an  attempt  by  live  performers  to  pre- 
serve the  fleeting  magic  of  the  stage.  Yet  many 
of  their  admirers  haven't  a  doubt  that  Sieg- 
fried and  Roy  will  live  on.  "I  think  they  will 
be  a  mythos— mythological  figures,"  says  their 
great  fan  97-year-old  German  filmmaker 
Leni  Riefenstahl,  most  famous  for  her  docu- 
mentary Triumph  of  the  Will,  on  the  phone 
from  Munich.  "Siegfried  and  Roy  are  wonder- 
ful artists— not  only  with  their  magic,  but  they 
make  so  many  people  happy!  And  their  love 
and  friendship  with  the  white  tigers  and  white 
lions  is  wonderful.  And  I  love  the  combina- 
tion of  ideas:  old  stories,  mystery,  the  charm, 
the  fantasy,  the  enormous  physical  difficulty. 
I  can't  believe  what  they  do  with  their  bodies. 
I  really  must  say,  I  think  that  they  will  be  leg- 
ends remembered  forever  into  the  future!" 

Siegfried,  Roy,  and  Werner  all  stand  at  the 
Little  Bavaria  gates  to  say  SARMOTi  to  Yu- 
man and  me  as  we  climb  into  the  manager's 
blue  Corvette.  The  two  wooden  doors  on  the 
compound's  grand  entrance  are  carved  with 
elaborate  cruciforms,  each  with  a  big  red 
heart  at  its  center.  Tonight,  a  night  off,  Sieg- 
fried and  Roy  plan  to  inspect  the  new  Man- 
dalay  Bay  hotel  and  casino  on  the  Strip.  "We 
like  to  see  how  Sin  City  has  grown  up!"  says 
Roy.  When  they  venture  out  in  public,  they 
generally  go  incognito,  covering  up  with  large 
cowboy  hats  and  dark  glasses.  "But  everyone 
knows  anyway,"  says  Roy. 

As  we  speed  toward  Vegas  on  the  highway. 
Yuman  makes  an  attempt  to  put  a  final  spin 
on  the  day's  proceedings,  ticking  off  some 
points  he'd  like  to  see  included  in  a  Siegfried- 
and-Roy  profile.  He  stresses  one  point  above 
all:  "Sincerely  and  respectfully,  please,  I  am 
pleading  with  you  for  your  word  that  you  will 
not  call  Siegfried  and  Roy  animal  trainers 
Whatever  you  do.  Please.  Say  that  Roy  is  a 
tiger  from  another  life,  because  that's  a  fact. 
And  I'd  call  Siegfried  a  magical  force,  deep  in 
the  depths  of  his  soul,  because  that  is  a  fact. 
But  what  1  call  them  both, "  says  the  manager, 
"is  well  versed  in  the  art  of  entertainment." 


UGUST     1999 


VANITY     FA 


\orlon 


01       i   that    kind   of 
the  work  unless  you've 

I  teborah  Aquila,  who  "discovered" 
when  she  was  casting  Primal  Fear, 
II  you're  having  a  cup  of  coffee  with  him, 
he's  verj  clear,  lucid,  he's  intellectual.  What 
do  well  is  tap  into  those  primal 
emotions.  [MaybcJ  he  goes  there  intellectual- 
Ij  and  imagines  the  kind  of  rage  that  a  char- 
acter like  that  would  feel  and  then  lets  it 
happen.  1  don't  think  that  he  walks  around 
with  that  in  his  heart."  Aquila  recalls  Norton 
reading  a  scene  for  Primal  Fear  in  which  his 
character  attacked  Richard  Gere's.  "I  didn't 
know  Edward  at  the  time,  and  I  got  a  little 
concerned  because  when  I  gazed  into  his 
eyes  there  was  no  sign  of  Edward.  1  thought, 
O.K.,  we  may  make  it  out  of  this  room,  and 
we  may  not." 

Norton  doesn't  like  the  idea  that  he  may 
have  a  dark  side,  or  that  his  films  suggest  so: 
"1  think  it's  always  dangerous,  with  any  artist, 
to  try  to  draw  too  many  literal  connections 
between  the  life  and  the  work.  On  a  purely 
personal  level,  one  of  the  really  great  thrills 
of  acting  is  that  it  lets  you  be  an  experiential 
dilettante.  You  can  pursue  an  enormous  di- 
versity of  people,  lifestyles,  worlds  of  experi- 
ence, all  without  the  consequence  of  actual- 
ly making  those  choices  in  life.  It's  like  having 
a  secret  key  that  lets  you  into  any  door." 

Edward  Norton  was  born  in  Boston  and 
grew  up  in  Columbia,  Maryland,  a 
planned  community  designed  by  his  late 
grandfather,  James  Rouse,  who  has  the  dubi- 
ous distinction  of  having  invented  the  shop- 
ping mall,  but  would  probably  have  liked  to 
be  remembered  for  revitalizing  inner  cities 
with  projects  like  Baltimore's  Harbor  Place. 
Although  it  may  sound  like  The  Truman 
Show's  Seahaven,  Columbia  actually  fostered 
a  salutary  mix  of  incomes  and  cultures,  and 
convinced  Norton  of  the  virtues  of  plural- 
ism. His  mother,  Robin,  taught  high  school, 
then  worked  for  a  civic  trust.  His  father,  Ed, 
was  a  federal  prosecutor  during  the  Jimmy 
Carter  administration  and  later  became 
something  of  an  environmental  activist. 

The  oldest  of  three  children,  Norton  has 
been  acting  since  he  was  five.  The  lightbulb 
went  on  when  his  baby-sitter,  who  later 
played  Cosette  in  Les  Miserables  on  Broad- 
way, took  him  to  see  a  musical  version  of 
Cinderella  at  the  local  drama  school.  He 
was  overcome  with  the  urge  to  play  one  of 
Cinderella's  mice,  and  rushed  down  to  the 
school  to  take  acting  lessons,  hoping  to  be 
cast  before  the  production  ended.  He  was 
not,  but  it  was  his  first  "I  want  to  do  that" 
moment,  and  he  acted  throughout  grade 
school.    In   high   school,   however,    acting 


wasn't  considered  "cool."  Recalls  Norton,    I 

stopped  doing  plays  and  stopped  tal  in 
ing  classes,  even  though  I  really  loved  it." 
One  day  when  he  was  16.  his  teachei  look 
the  class  to  see  a  one-man  show  by  Ian 
Mckellen  called  Acting  Shakespeare  in  near- 
by Washington,  D.C.  "That  was  the  first 
thing  I  saw  that  really  just  crushed  me  on  an 
adult  level,"  he  continues.  "It  blew  my  mind. 
I  remember  riding  on  the  school  bus  back.  I 
sort  of  sat  by  myself,  away  from  my  friends, 
and  I  was  thinking.  You  have  to  reconsider 
this  whole  thing.  You  have  to  take  this  very, 
very  seriously  because  what  [McKellen]  was 
doing  was  a  serious  thing  you  could  do  for 
life.  And  so  I  started  taking  acting  classes 
again  and  I  did  a  lot  of  it  in  college." 

College  was  Yale,  where  he  intended  to 
major  in  astronomy,  but  switched  to  history 
instead  when  he  couldn't  hack  the  physics.  He 
learned  Japanese  and  spent  one  summer  in 
Osaka  working  for  a  real-estate  development 
company.  And  throughout  his  time  in  New 
Haven  he  took  as  many  theater  courses  as  he 
could,  doing  Chekhov  and  the  like.  He  grad- 
uated in  May  1991  and  moved  to  New  York. 

Then  as  now,  Norton  regarded  himself  as 
a  character  actor.  "You  can't  underestimate 
what  people  like  Dustin  Hoffman  and  Robert 
De  Niro  did,"  he  explains.  "Coming  out  of 
the  late  60s,  they  asserted  that  you  could  be 
something  other  than  the  traditional  Tab 
Hunter  leading  guy,  and  you  could  carry  a 
film,  you  could  be  a  lead  actor  as  a  character 
actor.  I'm  the  direct  beneficiary  of  the 
ground  those  guys  broke." 

Through  the  early  90s,  Norton  was  living 
an  actor's  life,  shuffling  odd  jobs  around  his 
life  in  the  theater,  waiting  tables,  temping, 
proofreading  at  a  court-reporting  service.  He 
even  tried  to  get  a  hack  license,  but  he  was 
too  young.  He  came  within  a  hairsbreadth  of 
being  cast  in  movies  such  as  With  Honors, 
Haekers,  Sahrina,  and  Up  Close  and  Personal 
"It's  very  frustrating,"  he  says,  "because  it's 
like  you  walk  up  to  a  line  and  you  can  see 
over  on  the  other  side  how  your  life  is  gonna 
change  and  get  a  lot  more  exciting  if  you  can 
make  that  last  step,  and  then  you  don't,  and 
you  have  to  go  back  to  your  grind  temping 
or  waiting  or  whatever.  And  hustling." 

Once,  he  went  to  audition  for  the  New 
York  Shakespeare  Festival,  where  he  read  for 
Georgianne  Walken,  the  casting-director  wife 
of  Christopher  Walken.  By  that  time  in  his 
life  Norton  had  played  so  much  Shakespeare 
he  could  have  done  it  in  his  sleep.  But,  as  he 
recalls  it,  she  sat  him  down  and  said,  "Well, 
if  you  don't  mind  my  saying  so,  I  think  you 
might  want  to  consider  doing  something  else 
other  than  acting." 

"I'm  sorry?" 

"I'm  just  saying  this  to  you  because  I 
think  it's  important  for  you  to  hear  it.  I'm 
not  sure  this  is  the  best  choice  for  you."  He 
says  now,  "Those  moments  can  be  very  im- 


portant because  if  they  make  you  douD 
yourself,  you  oughta  get  out.  But  if  you  wal 
out  pissed  oil  and  convinced  that  they'! 
wrong,  then  you're  probably  in  the  right  bus 
ness.  I  walked  out  pissed  off,  thinking  si 
was  an  idiot,  and  I  was  going  to  show  her." 

Norton's  first  break  was  being  cast  in  Pi 
mal  Fear.  The  role  of  the  cunning  killer  wh 
concocts  a  sweet,  Kentucky-choirboy  doppe 
ganger  was  a  career-maker,  one  that  evei 
young  actor  on  both  coasts  was  dying  to  ge 
It  was  slated  for  Leonardo  DiCaprio,  wh 
eventually  backed  out.  (Recalls  Hoblit,  the  c 
rector,  "The  last  time  1  talked  to  him  he  was  i 
Africa  in  a  tent  on  some  sort  of  radiophon 
bouncing  off  a  satellite.  It  was  clear  he  w; 
just  not  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  go  to  work." 

Searching  for  a  replacement,  the  filmmal 
ers  threw  out  a  net  that  drew  in  2,100  actoi 
from  L.A.  to  London,  South  Texas  to  Can! 
da,  all  to  no  avail.  "We'd  have  some  wonde 
ful  actors,"  continues  Hoblit,  "Matt  Damo 
being  one  of  them,  who  could  just  nail  on 
of  the  character's  two  sides  but  couldn't  ge 
the  other  one.  They'd  get  the  good  guy  bi 
not  the  bad  guy  or  they'd  get  the  bad  gu 
but  not  the  good  guy."  The  actors  were  als 
having  trouble  handling  the  shift  between  th 
two  personalities,  which  in  the  script  wa 
broadly  written,  calling  for  lots  of  eye  spii 
ning,  muscle  twitching,  and  vein  throbbing  i 
a  manner  reminiscent  of  Linda  Blair's  poi 
session  in  The  Exorcist.  "I  was  prepare 
emotionally  not  to  do  the  movie  if  I  couldn 
find  the  right  person  for  the  role,"  Hobl 
says.  Indeed,  he  was  close  to  giving  up  whe 
he  got  a  call  from  Deborah  Aquila,  Para 
mount's  senior  vice  president  of  features  cas 
ing.  She  had  stumbled  onto  Norton  at  a 
open  casting  call  in  New  York  City.  His  pei 
formance  had  been  so  authentic  he  had  he 
convinced  he  actually  came  from  Kentucky. 

Norton  recalls  that  before  the  audition  foi 
mally  began  "she  said  something  to  me,  anc 
I  just  kind  of  answered  her  [in  character 
And  then  when  I  left,  she  said  some  ver 
nice  things  to  me,  and  I  just  kind  of  stayei 
with  the  whole  thing.  I  don't  think  I  lied.  Bu  h 
I  think  I  said  I  had  family  from  eastern  Ken  [-i 
tucky.  Maybe  I  augmented  a  little  bit." 

Hoblit  flew  in  from  L.A.  to  see  the  hand 
ful  of  actors  Aquila  thought  had  promise.  Hi 
remembers:  "It  was  one  of  those  pennies- 
from-heaven  kind  of  things.  When  Edwarc 
came  in,  it  was  an  electrifying  moment.  I 
was  the  first  time  that  I  sort  of  sat  forward  ii 
my  chair  and  went,  'Oh.'  He  was  making  th< 
shifts  [between  the  character's  two  personali 
ties]  beautifully,  through  a  subtle  facial  change 
a  subtle  yet  clear  shift  in  intonation.  Edwarc 
just  nailed  it,  and  I  knew  he  was  the  one." 

Unfortunately,  the  studio  was  not  enthusi 
astic  about  trusting  a  total  unknown  with  sucl 
a  key  role.  Aquila  says  she  had  "tread  marks'! 
on  her  back  from  trying  to  get  Paramount  tq] 
take  a  chance  with  him.  The  filmmakers  evenl 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     1  9  9  ' 


Il\  Hew  Norton  to  L.A.  to  shoot  tests.  On 

I   plane,  he  thought  to  himself,  "O.K.,  this 

>  he  trip  Dustin  made  to  test  for  Hie  Grad- 

\'e.  It's  like  he  was  not  a  traditional  leading 

m,  and  neither  am  I.  He  was  a  character 

or.  and  so  am  I.  He  did  it,  I  can  do  it." 

In  the  end,  Norton's  screen  test  for  Primal 

ir  not  only  got  him  that  part  but  also  cir- 

ated  around  town,  and  within  a  few  weeks 

was  reading  for  Woody  Allen's  Everyone 

ys  I  Love  You  and  Milos  Forman's  Tlie 

>plc  vs.  Larry  Firm. 

The  miracle  of  Norton's  performances  is 
it  when  he  talks  about  acting  he  gives  the 
pression  of  being  a  totally  cerebral  actor, 
e  who  thinks  himself  into  a  role;  on-screen, 
wever.  he  is  entirely  intuitive  and  sponta- 
ous.  According  to  Forman,  "Edward's  great 
vantage  is  that  he  combines  instinct  with 
ellectual  analysis.  And  if  he  keeps  it  in  per- 
:t  balance,  instinct  and  intellect,  that's  the 
jatest  result  you  can  get  from  an  actor.  The 
Jy  problem  [with  Edward],  which  some- 
nes  is  very  annoying,  but  which  I  gladly 
lerate,  is  that  he's  a  perfectionist.  I  am  also 
perfectionist,  and  on  the  film  set  there  is  no 
ly  to  accommodate  two  perfectionists." 
Matt  Damon,  who  found  that  performing 
iposite  Norton  in  Rounders  raised  the  level 
his  own  game,  seconds  Forman's  analysis: 
idward's  definitely  a  perfectionist.  He  will 
it  stop  because  he's  tired,  he  won't  stop  be- 
use  everyone  else  says  it's  time  to  stop, 
lere  was  one  scene  [in  Rounders]  where  our 
aracters  get  in  a  huge  argument  out  of 
tors,  after  these  cops  beat  us  up.  That  was 
long  night,  and  it  was  pretty  cold.  We  did 
iward's  scenes,  then  we  did  mine,  and  Ed- 
ird  found  something  for  his  own  perfor- 
mce  in  my  stuff,  so  he  asked  to  set  up  a 
ot  and  go  back  to  his  scenes.  It's  tough  to 
y  that  out  loud  at  four  in  the  morning  to 

0  cold  people— 'We're  gonna  stay  another 
iur  and  do  this  again'— but  he  stuck  to  it. 
i  really  felt  like  it  was  important." 

Torton's  part  in  American  History  X  ted  to 

1  the  first  high-profile  controversy  of  his 
v-profile  career.  He  and  British  director  Tony 
jye  were  not  a  match  made  in  heaven.  While 
)rton  is  intensely  private  and  cerebral,  hype 
d  histrionics  are  the  sea  in  which  Kaye  swims, 
conceptual  artist  as  well  as  a  filmmaker,  he 
a  practitioner  of  what  he  calls  "hype-art," 
d  coming  out  of  the  world  of  British  televi- 
m  commercials,  he  puts  a  premium  on  fast 
ce,  image,  and  cutting.  Kaye  didn't  get  Nor- 
1;  he  was  searching  for  a  Marlon  Brando 
)e,  a  more  natural-bom  skinhead,  but  agreed 
cast  Norton  under  pressure  from  the  pro- 
cers  and  New  Line  Cinema,  the  company 
it  financed  the  film.  As  later  events  proved, 
lye  never  did  reconcile  himself  to  Norton. 
Just  before  the  shooting  started,  in  March 
1997,  Norton's  mother  died  of  brain  cancer 
the  age  of  54,  shortly  after  the  deaths  of 


two  of  his  grandparents.  Says  Drew  Barry- 
more,  "The  most  important  person  in  his  life 
was  his  mom.  It  was  a  very  hard  year  for 
him."  Adds  John  Morrissey,  one  of  the  pro- 
ducers of  American  History  X,  "I  thought  this 
was  going  to  have  a  profound  effect  on  him  in 
this  movie,  and  I  think  it  did.  A  lot  of  the 
rage  in  him  had  to  do  with  his  rage  about  los- 
ing something  that  dear  to  him."  Aside  from 
Norton's  grief,  however,  the  production  itself 
was  fairly  uneventful,  and  ended  in  May. 

But  what  happened  next  was  anything  but 
smooth.  Kaye  had  shot  a  lot  of  film,  and  it  took 
a  long  time  to  edit,  more  than  a  year.  (Most 
films  take  several  months.)  He  did  a  few  cuts, 
each  one  progressively  shorter.  "The  first  cut 
that  I  saw  was  about  90  minutes,"  says  David 
McKenna,  the  film's  writer.  "It  was  so  cut  down 
none  of  the  scenes  were  allowed  to  play  out, 
and  the  characters  were  shallow.  He  literally 
destroyed  the  movie.  It  was  a  commercial." 

New  Line  wasn't  happy,  Morrissey  wasn't 
happy,  McKenna  wasn't  happy,  and  Norton 
wasn't  happy.  "Edward  and  I  were  irate," 
McKenna  recalls.  "I  wasn't  in  a  position 
with  the  studio  to  put  the  movie  back  to- 
gether, but  I  knew  Edward  had  enough 
power  to  fix  the  movie.  So  after  Tony  spent 
15  months  on  the  damn  thing,  we  finally 
just  kind  of  said,  'Get  Edward's  ass  in  there 
and  have  him  do  a  cut.'" 

For  a  while,  it  was  all  very  amicable. 
While  Norton  was  in  the  editing  room  work- 
ing with  an  editor  of  his  own,  Kaye  contin- 
ued to  noodle  his  version  next  door.  But 
eventually  Kaye  insisted  Norton  go.  Recalls 
Morrissey,  "Edward  at  this  point  became 
very,  very  nervous  because  he  was  being  de- 
picted very  publicly  as  having  taken  this  film 
away  from  Tony.  He  felt  that  that  wasn't 
true,  and  I  have  to  agree  with  him.  That  isn't 
what  happened." 

Eventually,  the  actor  put  as  much  distance 
between  himself  and  the  American  History  X 
situation  as  he  could,  going  off  to  do  Round- 
ers in  December  1997.  Meanwhile,  after 
months  of  increasingly  desperate  behavior  on 
Kaye's  part,  New  Line  finally  pulled  the  plug 
on  the  director,  made  some  tweaks  of  its 
own— on  a  combination  of  the  two  versions— 
and  went  forward  with  plans  to  release  the 
film.  Kaye  began  taking  full-page  ads  in  the 
trade  papers  (dozens  each  in  Variety  and  the 
Hollywood  Reporter),  attacking  various  peo- 
ple connected  with  the  movie. 

By  most  accounts,  however,  the  final  cut  was 
not  all  that  different  from  Kaye's.  "That  movie 
is  not  anybody  else's  movie,"  says  Norton. 
"That  movie  is  Tony  Kaye's  movie  all  the  way." 

(Replies  Kaye,  whose  wounds  have  obvi- 
ously not  healed,  "How  does  he  have  the  au- 
dacity to  tell  you  it  was  my  film?  . . .  He's  an 
East  Coast  privileged  young  man  whose 
grandfather  invented  the  ice-cream  cone,  or 
whatever  it  bloody  well  was.  which  is  why 
he's  on  the  cover  of  Vanity  Fair,  or  Vanity 


'Unfair,'  a  little  quicker  than  me.  I  was  going 
to  take  Hollywood  by  storm,  and  I  would 
have,  but  for  that  buffoon.") 

For  Norton,  Rounders  was  a  pleasure  from 
beginning  to  end.  Directed  by  John  Dahl, 
the  film  is  a  drama  in  which  Damon  plays  a 
proto-yuppie  law  student  with  a  jones  for  poker, 
and  Norton  is  Worm,  his  ex-con  pal,  a  scum- 
my, self-destructive,  inveterate  card  cheat— a 
relationship  somewhat  reminiscent  of  the  one 
between  Harvey  Keitel  and  Robert  De  Niro 
in  Martin  Scorsese's  Mean  Streets. 

"I  remember  John  calling  me  up,  he  was 
really  excited,  and  he  said  Edward  Norton 
might  be  interested  in  it,"  recalls  Damon, 
checking  in  from  the  South  Texas  set  of  All 
the  Pretty  Horses  (the  film  version  of  Cormac 
McCarthy's  best-selling  novel,  a  revisionist 
Western).  "That  was  the  end  of  that  conversa- 
tion. I  first  saw  him  in  Primal  Fear.  He  beat 
me  out  for  that  part,  a  part  I  really  wanted. 
When  he  did  that,  the  talk  among  young  un- 
employed actors  in  Hollywood  was:  Who's 
this  guy  that  nobody's  ever  heard  of?  So  he 
was  kind  of  on  everybody's  radar.  Then  Hie 
Rainmaker  came  around,  he  and  I  were  both 
up  for  that,  and  we  met  in  Memphis,  because 
we  screen-tested  on  the  same  day."  When  he 
ran  into  Norton.  Damon  thought  it  was  all 
over.  He  continues:  "Not  only  had  he  beat 
me  out  when  we  were  both  unknown,  but  then 
he  was  known,  and  I  thought,  I'm  screwed,  I 
don't  have  a  chance."  This  time,  it  was  Da- 
mon's turn,  but  it  was  the  beginning  of  a 
friendship.  "I  told  him  what  I  thought  of  him, 
[that]  he  was  pretty  much  the  man  among 
the  young  up-and-comers.  I  was  the  first  one 
to  meet  him— we  got  along  really  well." 

As  someone  who  holds  his  cards  close  to 
the  chest— "He  is  a  subplot  person,"  ob- 
serves Barrymore;  "there  are  other  things 
going  on  than  just  what  he  gives  out"— Nor- 
ton is  constitutionally  well  suited  to  poker.  It 
was  a  game  he  hadn't  much  played,  but  he 
and  Damon  quickly  got  good  enough  to 
take  on  Harvey  Weinstein.  and  his  brother. 
Bob,  who  were  financing  Rounders.  "Harvey 
and  Bob  fancy  themselves  big-time  poker 
players,  so  we  challenged  them  to  put  to- 
gether a  game."  recalls  Norton.  "Matt  and  I 
definitely  chopped  'em  up." 

Rounder  writers  David  Levien  and  Brian 
Koppleman  were  also  at  the  table.  "Edward 
was  almost  impossible  to  read."  recalls  Kop- 
pleman. "You  couldn't  tell  when  he  had  a 
good  hand  or  when  he  didn't  He  pist 
sucked  those  guys  in.  made  them  underesti- 
mate him.  One  time  Bob  had  a  decent  hand, 
said  something  like  'Whaddya  hiding  under 
there?'  Edward  said.  'What  do  you  think  I 
have.  Bob?  Like,  I  got  two  kings'1'  And  he 
actually  did  have  two  kings,  but  he  said  it  in 
such  a  way  that  Bob  didn't  believe  him.  so 
Bob  bet  into  him,  and  lost.  Edward  used  the 
truth  as  a  weapon."  As  Harvey  Weinstein  re- 


IGUSI     19  9  9 


VANITY      FA 


Morton 


bastards  won.  Norton,  I 
i  J00,  and  Man  won  $800  or 
Edward   he's  .1  total  Method 
1-  (  him  two  months  and  he  be- 
an expert  in  whatever.  He  wiped  ns 
out."  Noiion  guesses  the  Weinsteins  will  prob- 
ablj  figure  out  a  way  to  get  it  back.  As  he 
puts  it,  '  Nobody  wins  money  off  Miramax." 

Ton}  Kaye  was  still  in  the  editing  room 
with  American  History  X  when  Norton 
finished  Rounders  and  started  Fight  Club. 
Despite  its  bizarre  premise  and  lurid  con- 
tent, Fox  2000  head  Laura  Ziskin  had  bought 
the  novel  for  $10,000.  "1  didn't  know  how 
to  make  a  movie  out  of  it,"  she  says.  "But 
I  thought  someone  might."  That  someone 
proved  to  be  Fincher,  no  stranger  to  the  outre. 

Fincher  hired  Norton  off  his  performance 
in  The  People  vs.  Lorry  Flynt,  the  only  one  of 
the  actor's  films  he'd  seen.  Recalls  Fincher, 
"1  said,  'That's  the  guy,  Edward  Norton." 
Then  I  saw  him  do  the  dance  in  the  Woody 
Allen  movie  and  I  thought.  This  guy's  pretty 
fearless.  I  don't  know  who  else  could  play 
this  role.  I  don't  believe  Matt  Damon  in  this 
role,  I  don't  believe  Ben  Affleck  in  this  role,  I 
don't  believe  Giovanni  Ribisi  in  this  role.  Ed- 
ward's ultimately  kind  of  a  great  blank  slate. 
His  opacity  is  part  of  the  thing  that  makes 
him  a  terrific  Everyman." 

Norton  says  he  sees  Fight  Club  as  a  Gen 
X  call  to  arms.  "There  were  things  in  Fight 
Club  that  I  hadn't  heard  said  and  that  I  real- 
ly believe,"  he  says.  "There's  a  speech  that's 
straight  out  of  the  book  where  Brad  says,  'I 
see  some  of  the  smartest  people  of  my  gener- 
ation working  as  gas-station  attendants,  and 
clerks,  or  slaves  with  white  collars,  working 
in  jobs  we  hate  to  earn  money  to  buy  shit 
that  we  don't  need.'  Those  are  sentiments 
that  I  feel.  This  script  was  the  first  thing 
that  was  like  a  fist  angrily  slamming  on  the 
table  and  saying,  We're  sick  of  this." 

As  Helena  Bonham  Carter  noted,  Norton's 


talk  just  Hows  Says  Norton,  "There's  a  part 
in  the  film  that  we  wrote  it's  not  in  the 
book  where  Brad  and  I  sort  of  have  a  con- 
versation, in  which  he  says,  'Do  you  know 
what  a  duvet  is'.'-  And  I  say,  'Yeah,  it's  a  com- 
forter.' And  he  says,  'No,  it's  a  blanket.'  And 
then  he  says,  'But  why  do  two  young  men, 
our  age,  right  now,  know  what  the  word  duvet 
means?  Is  that  essential  for  our  survival  in  the 
hunter-gatherer  sense  of  the  word?'  And  I 
say,  'Because  we're  consumers?'  And  he  says, 
'Yeah,  what  terrifies  me  is  that  war  and  pov- 
erty and  crime  don't  actually  affect  my  life, 
don't  actually  scare  me  all  that  much  even 
though  I  hear  about  them  all  the  time.  What 
actually  makes  me  stressed  on  a  day-to-day 
level  is  all  these  things  that  I  get  told  I  need, 
like  an  upgrade  to  500  channels,  an  upgrade 
to  a  faster  microprocessor.  Hair-replacement 
products.  Designer  underwear.'"  (Pitt  and 
Norton  needn't  have  worried  about  their  fa- 
miliarity with  duvets,  which  are  quilts  filled 
with  down.  Hunting  and  gathering  lives.) 

Though  Fox  executives  had  read  the  script, 
the  finished  film  was  something  of  a  shock. 
When  the  lights  went  up  after  Fincher  and 
producer  Art  Linson  first  screened  the  film, 
the  executives  were  ashen,  looking  like  they 
had  just  witnessed  a  fatal  car  wreck  in  slow 
motion.  But  the  following  day  each  one  called 
Fincher  to  congratulate  him.  Studio  head  Bill 
Mechanic  told  him,  "This  is  one  of  the  best 
movies  ever  made  at  Twentieth  Century  Fox." 

For  an  actor  less  determined  than  Norton, 
directing  a  film  after  appearing  in  only  a 
handful  might  seem  alarming.  But  rest  as- 
sured he'll  storyboard  every  shot,  scout  every 
location,  and  block  every  scene  in  his  head 
before  he  even  comes  near  the  set  of  Keeping 
the  Faith. 

"The  thing  about  directing,  it's  90  percent 
casting,  so  you  figure  you  get  that  out  of  the 
way,  it's  a  matter  of  getting  out  of  bed,"  says 
Damon,  laughing.  "Edward's  gonna  be  a  great 
actors'  director.  I'd  work  with  him  in  a  minute." 

Norton  has  trained  himself  for  this  mo- 
ment from  the  time  he  did  Primal  Fear,  and 


part 


probably  earlier,  witli  the  shorts  he  directed  i;1' 
a  kid.  "I'm  not  a  go-back-to-llic-liailer  kind  f 
person,"  lie  says.  "And  I've  been  really,  rea  d" 
Ion  11 1  Kite  in  that  I  couldn't  have  had  a  bet  t 
series  of  directors  to  tutor  me."  Stuart  Blu 
berg,  who  has  been  close  to  Norton  sin  I 
then  days  together  at  Yale,  wrote  the  origii 
script  lor  Keeping  the  Faith,  his  first:  over 
years  l lie  two  friends  revised  it  together.  "A 
certain  point  you  feel  like  it's  yours  to  tel  ' 
Norton  continues,  "and  you  don't  really  w; 
to  turn  it  over  to  someone  else.  I  just  decid 
I'd  give  directing  it  a  crack." 

Keeping  the  Faith  is  a  story  about  t 
proverbial  love  triangle,  two  guys  and  a  gi 
except  that  the  guys  are  a  New  York  C 
priest  (Norton)  and  a  rabbi  (Stiller),  althou 
the  girl  (Elfman)  is  still  just  the  girl.  "T 
film  interested  me  because  it's  about  what 
means  to  be  young,  modern,  and  human" 
a  multicultural  place  like  New  York  Cit\ 
Norton  explains.  "All  my  friends  who 
Jewish  have  this  tension  that  they  feel  t 
tween  being  the  children  of  the  civil-rigr 
generation  and  the  ultimate  flowering 
everything  that  they  worked  for  in  tho 
days— 'I'm  dating  a  girl  who  is  half-Japane 
or  black'— when,  on  another  level,  they're  g< 
ting  this  pressure  from  exactly  the  oppos 
direction,  to  maintain  the  traditions  of  the 
culture,  to  honor  them  on  some  level." 

It  may  sound  like  a  tall  order  to  shoeho 
these  preoccupations  into  a  genre  form 
even  one  as  limber  as  romantic  comedy,  b 
it  works,  at  least  on  paper.  "I've  tried  to  ( 
something  pretty  different  almost  every  tim< 
Norton  continues.  "That  keeps  me  intereste 
And  if  I'm  a  little  bit  nervous,  that's  a  goc 
sign.  Warren  Beatty  once  said  to  me,  'If  you' 
going  to  direct  a  movie,  just  do  it  before  yc 
think  you're  ready.  Don't  wait  for  the  perfe 
opportunity,  because  the  first  time,  you  got 
just  do  it.'  It's  inevitably  a  bungee  jump.  On 
certain  date,  we're  starting,  come  hell  or  hij 
water.  Whatever  gets  done  between  now  ar 
then  will  get  done.  Whatever  doesn't,  doesn't 
Norton  adds  a  verbal  shrug:  "It's  only 
movie."  As  if  he  could  possibly  believe  that. 


» 
ik 

: 

IS 


Stanley  Kubrick 

continued  ihdm  PAGh  iso  Full  Metal  Jaeket. 
I  wasn't  the  cameraman  or  the  art  director 
or  even  a  grip,  or,  thank  God,  an  actor.  I 
was  only  even  on  the  location  two  or  three 
times,  so  maybe  I  wasn't  properly  enslaved 
at  all.  I  may  have  rewritten  a  few  scenes  20 
or  30  times— I  would  have  done  that  any- 
way—but I  never  had  to  go  through  the 
number  of  takes  Stanley  would  require.  It 
was  everything  anyone  ever  said  it  was  and 
more,  and  worse,  whatever  it  took  to  "get  it 
right,"  as  he  always  called  it.  What  he  meant 


by  that  I  couldn't  say,  nor  could  hundreds 
of  people  who  have  worked  for  him,  but  none 
of  us  doubted  that  he  knew  what  he  meant. 

After  seeing  Paths  of  Glory,  I  remember 
walking  out  on  the  street  and  thinking 
that  I'd  never  seen  anybody  shot  and  killed  in 
a  movie  before.  I  was  17,  I'd  seen  a  few  (thou- 
sand) movies,  and  I  soon  realized  that  I'd 
been  seeing  it  all  my  life:  cowboys  shooting  In- 
dians, Indians  shooting  cavalry,  cops  shooting 
robbers,  good  guys  shooting  bad  guys,  weak 
guys  shooting  strong  guys,  Japanese  and  Ger- 
mans and  Americans  shooting  one  another— 
it  was  a  staple  of  the  cinema.  This  was  the  first 


time  I'd  seen  it  done  in  this  way,  as  calcula 
ed  and  pitiless  as  a  firing  squad  itself,  no  po 
sibility  to  dissociate,  no  way  to  look  someplac 
else.  Stanley  had  apparently  wanted  a  las 
minute  reprieve  for  the  condemned  soldiers, 
happy  ending,  because  it  was  more  comme 
cial,  and  he  wanted  to  make  money.  Now,  2 
years  later,  he  wanted  Joker,  the  teenage  her 
of  The  Short-Timers  and  of  his  still-untitle 
movie,  to  die.  (He  also  wanted  a  Joker  void 
over.)  I  didn't  think  so.  "It's  the  Death  of  th 
Hero,"  he  said.  "It'll  be  so  powerful,  so  mc 
ing."  And  he  was  genuinely  moved  by  i 
"We've  seen  it  in  Homer,  Michael." 

I'd  arrived  for  work  in  the  late  afternooi 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


. 


Bad)  for  some  serious  brainstorming,  Mi- 
iel?  You  want  a  drink  first?"  I  reflexively 
:cked  my  watch.  "How  come  all  you  heavy 
nkers  always  look  at  your  watches  when 
nebody  offers  you  a  drink?" 
Jim  Thompson,  the  toughest  pulp  novel- 
of  them  all,  had  made  him  nervous  when 
y  were  working  together  on  Tlie  Killing,  a 
;  guy  in  a  dirty  old  raincoat,  a  terrific 
iter  but  a  little  too  hard-boiled  for  Stan- 
's taste.  He'd  turn  up  for  work  carrying  a 
ttle  in  a  brown  paper  bag,  but  saying 
thing  about  it— it  was  just  there  on  the 
^k  with  no  apology  or  comment— not  at 
interested  in  putting  Stanley  at  ease  ex- 
3t  to  offer  him  the  bag,  which  Stanley  de- 
ned,  and  making  no  gestures  whatever  to 
y  part  of  the  Hollywood  process,  except 
lybe  toward  the  money. 
We  were  working  that  afternoon  in  the 
a  Room,  a  large  space  on  the  ground  floor, 
lich  would  have  been  airy  if  it  hadn't  been 
immed  with  computers  and  filing  cabi- 
ts,  long  trestle  tables  littered  with  sketches, 
ins,  contracts,  hundreds  of  photographs 
weapons,  streets,  pagodas,  prostitutes, 
rines,  signs.  (He'd  taken  three  months,  an 
tire  summer,  to  go  through  his  Full  Metal 
cket  contract  with  Warners,  crawling  up 
iderneath  the  boilerplating  to  make  sure 
ere  were  no  hidden  viruses,  checking  the 
otenc  meanings  of  "force  majeure,"  calling 
s  lawyer,  Louis  Blau,  in  L.A.  every  hour, 
cause  Stanley  hated  surprises. )  There  were 
'0  sets  of  French  doors  opening  onto  the 
rden,  part  of  which  was  fenced  off  to 
ake  sure  that  none  of  the  dogs  got  to  any 
the  cats.  He  kept  the  cats  in  this  section 
the  house  and  fed  them  himself.  While 
:  talked  he  cleaned  their  litter  boxes. 
The  American  language  of  the  Vietnam 
ar  gave  him  tremendous  pleasure.  "Mi- 
ael,  I  need  this  scene  finished  most  ricky- 
k"  (a  variation  on  "I  don't  want  it  good, 
want  it  Tuesday"),  or  "Michael,  these 
Lges  you  sent  me  today  are  Number  Ten. 
aughing.]  In  fact,  I  think  they  may  even  be 
umber  Twelve?  One  scene,  where  a  bunch 
Marines  sit  around  in  the  evening  eating 
rations  and  talking  (titled  "C  Rats  with 
idre"  on  the  scene-by-scene  file  cards  he 
pt),  wasn't  only  too  long  but  too  talky,  bor- 
l,  and  a  little  sentimental.  "Shouldn't  there 
some  guy  playing  a  harmonica  in  the 
ck?"  he  said.  One  day  we  took  a  few  of 
inley's  guns  over  to  a  local  gun  club  and 
ed  at  their  range.  It  surprised  him  that 
meone  who'd  spent  so  much  time  in  a  war 
uld  be  such  a  lousy  shot.  "Gee,  Michael, 
n  beginning  to  wonder  if  you've  got  what  it 
ces  to  carry  a  rifle  in  my  beloved  Corps." 
The  walls  of  his  workrooms  were  one 
ntinuous  shooting  board— lists  and  sched- 
ss,  names,  dates,  equipment,  locations; 
cept  for  one  crowded  wall,  which  seemed 
be  devoted  to  Stanley's  investments. 


He  liked  the  way  my  pages  looked:  open 
spacing,  agreeable  format,  good  font,  big 
enough  for  easy  reading  but  never  obtru- 
sive. He  was  very  happy  with  the  dialogue. 
But  he  wanted  the  scenes  shorter.  "Tell  me, 
Michael,  did  you  ever  see  a  movie  that  had 
too  many  good  short  scenes?"— a  funny 
question  from  a  director  who  loved  long 
takes  and  long  scenes,  who  was,  in  Antho- 
ny Lane's  opinion,  "alarmingly  insolent  to- 
ward the  demands  of  chronology,"  which 
wasn't  meant  as  a  compliment  but  should 
be,  and  referred  perhaps  to  the  leap  across 
three  million  years  in  a  single  jump  cut  in 
2001,  or  the  languorous  protractions  of 
18th-century  discourse  held  in  rooms  lit  by 
candles  in  Barry  Lyndon,  every  one  of  his 
films  making  its  powerful  assertion  that 
pace  is  story  as  surely  as  character  is  des- 
tiny. He'd  watched  The  Godfather  again  the 
night  before  and  was  reluctantly  suggesting 
for  the  10th  time  that  it  was  possibly  the 
greatest  movie  ever  made,  and  certainly  the 
best-cast. 

"Your  buddy  Francis  really  hit  the  nail 
on  the  head  with  that  one. .  . .  [Because 
Francis  was  another  director,  and  a  friend 
of  mine,  Stanley  affected  to  regard  him 
through  a  long  lens.]  It  was  certainly  better 
than  One  from  the  Heart. " 

"I  loved  One  from  the  Heart,"  I  said. 

"Boy,  Michael,  you're  so  loyal. . . .  Any- 
way, what  were  we  talking  about?" 

"Computers." 

It  drove  him  nuts  that  I  didn't  use  one. 
This  was  1983,  pre-laptop.  There  were  five 
computers  in  this  room  alone,  all  running, 
and  he'd  move  from  station  to  station  to 
feed  and  manipulate  data  while  we  talked. 

"Michael,  listen  to  me:  it's  only  a  very 
limited,  arbitrary,  and  simple  series  of  com- 
mands that  you  just  don't  know  yet.  I  mean, 
how  hard  can  it  be?  The  police  use  them." 

"I  know,  Stanley,  but—" 

"Michael  I'm  telling  you,  blah  blah  blah," 
and  "Michael  I  swear  to  God  blah  blah 
blah. ...  At  least  for  screenplays  [a  lesser 
form]  you're  crazy  not  to  use  them." 

He  gave  a  demonstration  to  soften  my 
Luddite  heart  and  show  me  that  I  was  only 
making  more  work  for  myself  by  resisting. 
He  went  to  the  computer  that  he  was  using 
to  write  the  script.  He  typed,  marked,  cut, 
pasted,  while  I  faked  interest.  When  he  was 
finished  with  the  routine,  Christiane  phoned 
to  say  that  dinner  was  ready.  As  we  left,  I  re- 
minded him  that  he  hadn't  turned  the  com- 
puters off. 

"They  like  to  be  left  on,"  he  said  ironi- 
cally, factually,  tenderly. 

I  sometimes  thought  that  he  was  ruled  by 
his  aversions:  chief  among  them-worse 
than  waste,  haste,  carelessness  to  details, 
hugging,  and  even  germs— was  bullshit  in 
all   its   proliferating   manifestations,   subtle 


and  gross,  from  the  flabby  political  face 
telling  lies  on  TV  to  the  most  private,  much 
more  devastating  lies  we  tell  ourselves.  Cul- 
ture lies  were  especially  revolting.  Hypoc- 
risy was  not  some  petty  human  foible,  it 
was  the  corrupted  essence  of  our  predica- 
ment, which  for  Stanley  was  purely  an  exis- 
tential predicament.  In  terms  of  narrative, 
since  movies  are  stories,  the  most  con- 
temptible lie  was  sentimentality,  and  the 
most  disgusting  lie  was  sanctimoniousness. 

Once  a  year  he'd  get  the  latest  issue  of 
Maledicta,  a  journal  of  scatological  invec- 
tive and  insult,  unashamedly  incorrect,  will- 
fully scurrilous,  and  pretty  funny,  and  read 
me  the  highlights. 

"Hey  Michael,  what's  the  American 
Dream?" 

"I  give." 

"Ten  million  blacks  swimming  to  Africa, 
with  a  Jew  under  each  arm." 

To  which  he  added,  "Don't  worry,  Mi- 
chael. They  don't  mean  us." 

Since  everybody  talks  about  Stanley 
Kubrick's  Eye,  I'd  like  to  say  a  word  about 
his  Ear:  I've  been  reading  lately  about  his 
"suspicion  of  language,"  in  books  and  crit- 
ical pieces,  and  in  the  often  strangely  ran- 
corous tributes  that  followed  his  death, 
and  yet  it's  always  seemed  obvious  to  me 
that  language  was  one  of  the  most  striking 
things  about  his  films.  Whether  cunning- 
ly, crushingly  banal  (a  couple  of  "normal 
guys  [getting]  together  to  talk  about  world 
events  in  a  normal  sort  of  way,"  as  Quilty 
incognito  tells  Humbert  agonistes  in  Lolita) 
or  in  manic  bursts  of  frantic  satire  (inspired 
and  encouraged,  maybe  childishly  egged 
on,  by  Terry  Southern  and  Peter  Sellers  in 
Dr.  Strangelove),  or  starkly  obscene,  utterly 
cruel,  sparing  nobody's  sensibilities,  from 
yarblocko  nadsat  in  A  Clockwork  Orange 
to  the  elaborate  yet  brutal  locutions  of  the 
18th  century  in  Barry  Lyndon  to  the  vi- 
cious comedy  of  Full  Metal  Jacket,  he  was 
highly  sensitive  to  literary  mi.se  en  scene, 
completely  susceptible  to  it.  He  wasn't 
merely  unsuspicious  of  language,  he  was  a 
believer,  he  had  faith  in  it.  Without  it.  dia- 
logue was  just  talk. 

Once  he  became  his  own  man.  he  was 
drawn  to  his  projects  as  much  by  the  writ- 
ing of  the  source  material  as  by  anything 
else.  Story  was  at  least  as  alive  in  the  voice 
as  it  was  in  the  plot;  I  know  this  is  true  of 
Lolita,  A  Clockwork  Orange,  Barry  Lyndon. 
and  Full  Metal  Jacket  (and  if  it  didn't  al- 
ready exist  in  Stephen  King.  Stanley  and 
Diane  Johnson  brilliantly  invented  it  for 
The  Shining),  and  although  I  haven't  seen 
it.  I'm  sure  that  Eyei  Hide  Shut  will  con- 
tain the  reflected,  refracted,  written  essence 
of  Arthur  Schnit/ler's  "Dream  Novel."  no 
matter  what  Stanley  did  to  the  "story"  after 
leaving  it  to  season  for  nearly  30  years  in 
his  mind.  He  was  always  looking  for  the  vi- 


I  G  U  S  T     19  9  9 


VANITY 


Kubrick 


n;ii  he'd  first  respond- 
n  id  the  book,  and  in  that 
orae  real  respect  to  it. 

Stanley  didn't  live  in  England  because  he 
disliked  America.  God  knows,  it's  all  he 
evei  talked  about.  It  was  always  on  his 
mind,  and  in  Ins  blood.  I'm  not  sure  he 
even  leally  knew  he  wasn't  living  in  Ameri- 
ca all  along,  although  he  hadn't  been  there 
since  1968.  In  the  days  before  satellite  TV, 
he'd  had  relatives  and  friends  send  him 
tapes  of  American  television— N.F.L.  games, 
the  Johnny  Carson  show,  news  broadcasts, 
and  commercials,  which  he  thought  were, 
in  their  way,  the  most  interesting  films  being 
made.  (He'd  tape  his  favorite  commercials 
and  recut  them,  just  for  the  monkish  exer- 
cise.) He  was  crazy  about  The  Simpsons 
and  Seinfeld,  and  he  loved  Roseanne,  be- 
cause it  was  funny  and,  he  believed,  the 
most  authentic  view  of  the  country  you 
could  get  without  actually  living  there.  "Gee, 
Stanley,  you're  a  real  man  of  the  people,"  I 
said,  but  in  his  way  he  was.  He  was  fiercely 
unpretentious.  He  was  exclusive,  he  had  to 
be,  but  he  wasn't  a  snob.  It  wasn't  America 
he  couldn't  take.  It  was  L.A. 

He  was  walking  into  a  Hollywood  restau- 
rant one  night  in  1955  as  James  Dean  came 
out,  stepped  into  the  Porsche  Spyder  that 
had  just  been  brought  around  by  the  park- 
ing valet,  and  drove  off.  Stanley  remarked  at 
the  time  how  fast  he  was  going. 

He  lived  in  Hollywood  for  three  or  four 
years  and  made  two  movies,  Tlie  Killing, 
which  got  him  a  lot  of  attention,  and  Paths 
of  Glory,  which  got  him  a  lot  of  respect.  He 
and  his  partner,  James  B.  Harris,  formed  a 
small  company.  He  went  to  a  thousand 
meetings  with  Harris,  tummled  and  hon- 
dled,  read  and  wrote  scripts,  watched  the 
big  changes  as  star  power,  in  the  form  of  in- 
dependent production  companies,  started 
breaking  down  the  old  studios,  and  wished 
all  the  time  that  he  was  in  New  York. 

Harris  told  me  that  when  they  were 
making  Paths  of  Glory  Stanley  came  to  him 
with  a  new  final  scene,  something  to  follow 
the  execution  of  the  three  soldiers  and  make 
the  ending  less  grim.  A  young  German  girl 
has  been  captured  by  the  French,  and  they 
force  her  to  sing  for  them  in  a  tavern.  They 
intend  to  humiliate  her,  but  when  she  sings, 
her  innocence  and  the  suffering  that  they've 
all  been  through  move  them  to  tears  of 
shame  and  humanity. 

Stanley  had  just  met  a  young  German 
actress,  Susanne  Christian,  and  was  going 
out  with  her.  "She  was  his  girlfriend,"  Har- 
ris said.  "He  was  really  crazy  about  her, 
and  he  came  to  me  with  this  scene  he'd 
just  written,  and  I  said,  'Stanley,  you  can't 


lust  do  this  scene  so  your  girlfriend  can  be 
in  I  he  movie.'"  Hut  Stanley  had  his  way, 
and  gave  the  film  an  unforgettable  ending. 

I  he  actress  was  incredible.  Then  she  and 

Stanley  got  married,  and  the  marriage  last- 
ed 40  years.  Harris  laughed.  "Boy,  was  I 
wrong." 

Stanley  could  hardly  fail  to  notice  that 
very  few  directors  had  anything  close  to  au- 
tonomy on  their  pictures.  He  said  the  way 
the  studios  were  run  in  the  50s  made  him 
think  of  Clemenceau's  remark  about  the  Al- 
lies winning  World  War  I  because  our  gen- 
erals were  marginally  less  stupid  than  their 
generals.  He  was  determined  to  find  some 
way  to  succeed  there,  because  he  didn't 
know  where  else  he  could  make  movies. 
His  ambition  was  spectacular;  he  had  talent 
and  confidence,  a  steely  brain  and  huge 
brass  balls.  He  saw  clearly  that  on  every  pic- 
ture someone  had  to  be  in  charge,  and  fig- 
ured that  it  might  as  well  be  him. 

He  told  me  that  he  owed  it  all  to  Kirk 
Douglas.  Douglas  once  called  Stanley  "a 
talented  shit,"  and  this  may  be  one  of  the 
nicer  things  he  said  about  him.  He'd  starred 
in  Paths  of  Glory,  and  even  though  he'd  done 
himself  a  lot  of  good  by  it,  I  imagine  that 
he  felt  Stanley  owed  him,  and  would  be 
grateful  and  pliant  when  he  hired  him  to 
replace  Anthony  Mann  after  three  weeks 
of  shooting  on  Spartacus.  The  script  had 
been  written  by  Dalton  Trumbo,  who  was 
still  blacklisted  in  1958,  and  when  the  pro- 
ducers agonized  over  whether  they  dared 
give  him  the  writing  credit  or  not,  Stanley 
suggested  that  they  solve  the  problem  by 
giving  the  credit  to  him.  (Douglas  says  that 
Stanley  never  wrote  one  word  of  that 
script,  but  I  doubt  this.  Laurence  Olivier's 
Crassus  is  the  most  complex  character  ever 
to  appear  in  an  epic-genre  film,  almost 
Shakespearean,  and  I'm  sure  Stanley  wrote 
and  otherwise  informed  a  lot  of  those 
scenes.  I  don't  think  he  wrote  lines  like 
"Get  up,  Spartacus,  you  Thracian  dog.") 
Kirk  Douglas  (and  this  is  rich)  was  offend- 
ed by  Stanley's  chutzpah. 

But  specifically,  conclusively,  it  was  Kirk 
on  horseback  and  Stanley  on  foot,  just 
about  to  shoot  a  scene  and  having  yet  an- 
other of  their  violent  disagreements.  Kirk 
rode  his  white  freedom-fighter  stallion  into 
Stanley  to  make  his  point,  which  was  that 
he  was  the  star  and  the  producer,  turning 
his  horse's  flank  against  Stanley,  pushing 
him  back  farther  and  farther  to  drive  it 
home  again,  then  riding  away,  leaving  Stan- 
ley standing  in  the  dust,  furious  and  humil- 
iated, as  one  of  the  wise  guys  on  the  crew 
walks  by  and  says,  "Remember,  Stanley: 
The  play's  the  thing." 

The  only  other  two  places  he  knew  of  to 
make  movies  in  were  New  York  and  Lon- 
don, and  New  York  was  too  hard,  and  too 
expensive.  That's  how  he  became  English 


Stanley,  and  why  he  made  all  his  niovi 
there,  most  of  them  within  an  hour's  dri 
from  his  house  The  English  work  etri 
drove  him  nuts.  The  crew  would  call  hij 
"Squire"  on  the  set,  and  he  got  so  piss 
off  at  their  endless  tea  breaks  that  he  wai 
ed  to  film  them  surreptitiously  when  he  w 
shooting  Lolita  there  in  1961.  He  said,  "E 
gland's  a  place  where  it's  much  more  dil 
cult  to  buy  something  than  to  sell  son 
thing."  He  once  asked  me  if  I'd  mind  mc 
ing  with  my  family  to  Vancouver  for  a  ye 
to  check  it  out  for  him,  and  he  heard  Sy 
ney  was  a  great  place,  maybe  I  could  t 
tha't  out  for  him  too,  but  he  liked  Englan 
it  suited  his  family  and  it  suited  him,  livi 
and  working  and  making  telephone  calls 
his  great  house,  his  multi-gated  manor,  I 
estate,  his  park.  And  anyway,  if  he'd  liv< 
in  America,  it  would  have  been  in  such' 
house,  used  the  same  way,  as  a  studio, 
citadel,  a  monastery,  a  controlled  Stanl 
Kubrick  environment,  so  what  differen 
did  it  make  which  country  it  was  in? 


IV 


Gentiles  don't  know  how  to  worry. 

—Stanley  Kubrk 

I  don't  want  to  give  the  impression  that 
didn't  get  extremely  irritated,  that  I  nev 
thought  he  was  a  cheap  prick,  or  that 
lack  of  trust  wasn't  sometimes  obstructs 
and  less  than  wholesome,  that  his  deman< 
and  requirements  weren't  just  too  muc 
Nothing  got  between  the  dog  and  his  mea 
somewhere  it  was  that  basic— I  only  ju 
hesitate  to  say  primitive.  It  was  definite 
unobstructed;  you'd  have  to  be  Herma 
Melville  to  transmit  the  full  strength 
Stanley's  will— My  Way  or  the  Highway— y 
he  rarely  raised  his  voice.  It  was  hard  t 
know  whether  he  was  just  supernatural 
focused  or  utterly  fixated.  "What  is  it  the 
say,  Michael— if  something  can  go  wronj 
it  will?"  Vigilance  wasn't  enough,  pn 
emption  was  the  only  way  to  go.  Don 
think  just  because  you've  known  a  few  coi 
trol  freaks  in  your  time  that  you  can  imaj 
ine  what  Stanley  Kubrick  was  like. 

Tony  Frewin  and  Leon  Vitali,  who'd  bee 
working  as  Stanley's  assistants  for  year 
said  there  was  a  staff  joke  about  the  on 
phrase  you  would  never  hear  at  Childwic 
Bury,  and  a  week  after  Stanley's  deat 
someone  actually  said  it  to  them.  It  wen 
"Use  your  own  judgment,  and  don't  both* 
me  with  the  details."  His  concerns  ran  fror 
the  ethereal-aesthetic  through  the  technics 
to  the  crudely  logistical,  no  detail  too  pre 
saic,  all  the  way  down  to  stationery  and  p< 
per  clips. 

We  know  that  even  though  he  had  a  p 
lot's  license  he'd  stopped  flying  almost  4 
years  ago,  allegedly  after  monitoring  the  ai 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


pnley  Kubrick 

ifnc  controllers  at  La  Guardia  Airport.  I 
:d  to  kid  him  about  oversubscribing  to 
1 :  germ  theory,  and  he'd  go  on  various 
alth  kicks  as  long  as  they  didn't  require 
y  effort,  like  an  aspirin  a  day,  and  vita- 
n  C  in  the  form  of  Redoxon,  an  English 
zy  tablet  in  various  flavors,  "very  pleasant- 
iting."  upgraded  to  "delicious,"  then  in- 
king scientific  opinion— "I  mean,  Michael, 
i  Linus  Pauling.  He  certainly  ought  to 
ow  what  he's  talking  about"— figuring, 
yway,  "at  the  worst,  you're  only  wasting 
ur  money." 

He  had  more  compartments  in  his  head 
an  anyone  else  I  have  ever  known,  and  he 
)uld  open  or  close  them  selectively  to  the 
:ople  he  was  working  with,  or  to  each  of 
s  friends;  the  one  with  the  money  in  it, 
e  one  where  he  kept  all  his  toys,  the  one 
nere  he  kept  his  most  personal  things,  like 
s  hopes  and  his  fears,  that  sort  of  thing, 
id  whatever  he  loved  most  besides  work, 
s  family  and  friends,  his  dogs  and  cats, 
nd  however  adroitly  he  manipulated  the 
jors  to  those  compartments— now  open, 
>w  closed— essentially  Stanley  was  a  very 
jen  guy.  Still,  none  of  those  compart- 
lents  ever  sprang  open  accidentally. 
Beyond  those  compartments,  and  govern- 
g  them,  was  a  capability  to  take  his  intelli- 
:nce  up  or  down  as  circumstances  required, 
ithout  ever  being  either  obscure  or  patron- 
ing,  a  rather  beautiful  quality  of  mind. 
I  once  told  Stanley  William  Burroughs's 
le  "A  paranoid-schizophrenic  is  a  guy 
ho  just  found  out  what's  going  on,"  and 
:  took  it  to  his  heart.  "Wait  a  minute, 
ait  a  minute.  I've  gotta  write  that  down." 
e  put  it  into  wide  release,  telling  it  to 
'eryone  he  knew,  and  I  think  it  was  most- 
because  he  was  so  pleased  to  find  him- 
tf  of  one  mind  with  someone  he  admired 
:  much  as  Burroughs.  "What  is  it  they 
iy,  Michael:  What  one  has  thought  so  of- 
n,  but  never  said  so  well?" 

j*  tanley  would  have  said  it  was  cash,  but 
J I  think  the  most  perishable  element  in 
e  making  of  a  movie  is  reverence.  On 
ost  pictures  it  rarely  survives  the  first  day 
'  shooting,  but  in  Stanley's  case  it  had  a 
b  of  its  own.  You  can  follow  its  career 
'er  the  course  of  a  series  of  interviews, 
iually  but  not  always  with  actors,  normal- 
spanning  a  couple  of  years:  They're  so 
)nored  to  be  working  with  Stanley,  they'd 
)  anything  in  the  world  to  work  with 
:anley,  such  a  privilege  they'd  work 
ith  Stanley  for  free.  And  then  they  work 
ith  Stanley  and  go  through  hells  that  noth- 
g  in  their  careers  could  have  prepared 
em  for;  they  think  they  must  have  been 
ad  to  get  involved,  they  think  that  they'd 


die  before  they  would  ever  work  with  him 
again,  that  fixated  maniac,  and  when  it's  all 
behind  them  and  the  profound  fatigue  of  so 
much  intensity  has  worn  off,  they'd  do  any- 
thing in  the  world  to  work  for  him  again. 
For  the  rest  of  their  professional  lives  they 
long  to  work  with  someone  who  cares  the 
way  Stanley  did,  someone  they  can  learn 
from.  They  look  for  someone  to  respect  the 
way  they  came  to  respect  him,  but  they 
can't  find  anybody.  Their  received,  fiction- 
alized, show-business  reverence  has  been 
chastened  and  reborn  as  real  reverence.  I've 
heard  this  story  so  many  times. 

He'd  been  looking  all  day  at  hundreds 
of  audition  tapes  sent  in  from  all  over 
America  and  England  in  response  to  the 
public  casting  call  for  Full  Metal  Jacket. 

"Some  of  them  are  interesting.  Most  of 
them  are  terrible.  Oh  well,  I  suppose  I  can 
always  wipe  the  tapes  and  use  them  to  re- 
cord football  on."  Like  this  was  the  first 
he'd  thought  of  it. 

Stanley  was  in  his  Low  Road  mode  for 
Full  Metal  Jacket.  "I  only  want  people  work- 
ing on  this  one  that  no  one  else  will  hire  or, 
if  they  hired  them,  would  never  dream  of 
hiring  them  again."  This  was  of  course 
Kubrickian  misanthropic  hyperbole,  mut- 
tered privately  to  me,  because  he  could  nev- 
er, would  never,  work  with  anything  less 
than  the  best,  even  if  that  meant  educating 
them  all,  "correcting"  them,  as  Grady  calls 
it  in  77ie  Shining.  And  he  started  in  on  ac- 
tors and  all  the  problems  they  bring,  not 
forgetting  to  sing  a  few  choruses,  without 
much  conviction,  of  his  old  song  about  ac- 
tors being  to  blame  for  the  number  of  takes 
he  was  always  forced  to  do.  On  Barry  Lyn- 
don, Marisa  Berenson  had  a  line,  "We're 
taking  the  children  for  a  ride  to  the  village. 
We'll  be  back  in  time  for  tea."  "And  Mari- 
sa couldn't  say  it.  We  must  have  done  50 
on  that  one  alone." 

We  talked  a  lot  about  actors  for  Full 
Metal  Jacket.  He  couldn't  wait  to  find  out 
who  would  play  Sergeant  Hartman,  the  de- 
mon drill  instructor— "It's  such  a  fantastic 
part."  We  talked  about  Robert  De  Niro, 
but  Stanley  thought  the  audience  would 
feel  cheated  when  he's  killed  off  in  the  first 
hour.  Then  he  was  thinking  about  Ed  Har- 
ris, but  Harris  wasn't  interested,  because 
"Get  this,  Michael.  He  wants  to  take  a 
year  off!  Hey,  I  know!  What  about  Richard 
Benjamin?  He'd  be  perfect.  Michael,  ha  ha 
ha  ha. " 

He  didn't  exactly  utter  the  word  "actors" 
under  his  breath  like  a  curse,  but  he  defi- 
nitely thought  of  them  as  wild  cards,  some- 
thing to  be  overcome  with  difficulty.  They 
were  so  lazy  about  learning  their  lines,  were 
often  otherwise  "unprepared."  so  capri- 
cious, so  childlike,  and  the  younger  ones 
were  completely  spoiled.  There  was  even 


something  mysterious,  and  to  him  a  little 
freakish,  about  anybody  who  could  and 
would  stand  up  in  front  of  other  people  to 
assume  and  express  emotions  at  will,  some- 
times to  the  point  of  tears. 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "I  have  to  tell 
you,  I  really  like  actors." 

"That's  because  you  don't  have  to  pay 
them,  Michael." 

One  of  the  sweetest  things  anybody  ever 
said  about  Stanley,  and  one  of  the  truest, 
was  something  Matthew  Modine  told  Stan- 
ley's biographer  Vincent  LoBrutto:  "He's 
probably  the  most  heartfelt  person  I  ever 
met.  It's  hard  for  him,  being  from  the  Bronx 
with  that  neighborhood  mentality,  and  he 
tries  to  cover  it  up.  Right  underneath  that 
veneer  is  a  very  loving,  conscientious  man, 
who  doesn't  like  pain,  who  doesn't  like  to 
see  humans  suffering  or  animals  suffering.  I 
was  really  surprised  by  the  man." 

This  from  a  guy  who  really  suffered  for 
most  of  the  year  that  he  was  in  London 
shooting  Full  Metal  Jacket,  as  part  of  an  en- 
semble of  young  actors,  some  of  them 
hardly  actors  at  all,  who  had  only  the  most 
rudimentary  sense  of  what  Stanley  actually 
meant  by  "knowing  your  lines";  by  which 
he  meant  that  you  had  to  know  them  so 
completely  that  there  were  no  other  possi- 
ble lines  anywhere  in  your  head,  and  cer- 
tainly no  lines  of  your  own,  unless  you 
were  Peter  Sellers  or  Lee  Ermey.  They  were 
a  jolly  enthusiastic  crew,  some  very  talent- 
ed, some  not,  all  thrilled  to  be  in  a  Stanley- 
Kubrick  movie— I  think  they  all  saw  blue 
skies  and  high  times  ahead— but  there  was 
a  plateau  of  discipline  that  they  couldn't 
have  known  existed  before.  Stanley  showed 
them,  and  it  hurt. 

Then  there  was  a  break  in  the  shooting 
of  almost  five  months  after  Lee  Ermey 
smashed  up  his  car  late  one  night  and  broke 
all  his  ribs  on  one  side.  Some  of  the  cast 
had  other  jobs  lined  up  and  had  to  juggle 
while  they  sat  and  waited  in  London,  going 
to  the  theater  five  and  six  times  a  week,  and 
tried  to  keep  some  kind  of  edge.  Vincent 
D'Onofrio  had  gained  40  or  50  pounds  to 
play  Private  Pyle,  and  he  had  to  keep  the 
weight  on  through  all  those  idle  months.  A 
few  of  them  with  their  wives  and  girlfriends 
would  come  to  our  apartment  for  dinner. 
and  they  were  all  flipping  out.  They  believed 
that  Stanley  asked  me  to  the  set  only  on  the 
rare  days  when  there  were  no  foreseeable 
glitches,  because  he  didn't  want  me  to  hear 
the  way  he  spoke  to  them.  When  I  went  to 
the  set,  they'd  come  over  to  me  between 
takes,  search  my  face  for  a  clue,  confused 
and  half-mutinous,  and  then  Stanley  would 
walk  by  and  say  something  like  "Don't  talk 
to  my  actors.  Michael." 

I  have  no  idea  what  really  went  on  lor 
Stanley  with  actors    I  do  know  that  it  was 


UGUST     1999 


VANITY     f  A  I  8 


tile\  Kubrick 


Ins  prevailing  hunch,  that  ac- 
■  ivorl  ing  only  when  film  was 
i1  he  had  any  preconceptions 
hat  he  wanted  them  to  be  doing,  he 
kepi  them  to  himself.  Maybe  actors  were 
essential!)  visuals  for  Stanley,  like  Alfred 
Hitchcock  and  his  blondes.  Stanley  said  he 
didn'1  like  Hitchcock  much  "all  that  pho- 
ny rear  projection"  but  they  had  a  lot  in 
common.  1  was  always  impressed  by  what 
Hitchcock  did  with,  or  to,  James  Stewart  in 
Vertigo,  ruthlessly  (but  far  more  subtly  than 
Carl  Dreyer  making  Falconetti  kneel  on 
cobblestones  all  night  to  experience  the  suf- 
fering of  Joan  of  Arc)  drawing  a  perfor- 
mance out  of  him  that  was  so  sweaty,  tor- 
tured, and  unwholesome  that,  if  Stewart 
had  known  he  had  any  of  that  in  him,  he 
would  have  done  anything  in  the  world  to 
conceal  it.  I  think  that  Stanley  did  some- 
thing like  this  with  just  about  every  actor 
he  ever  worked  with. 

Nor  could  I  explain  that  strange  irre- 
sistible requirement  he  had  for  pushing  his 
actors  as  far  beyond  a  "naturalistic"  style  as 
he  could  get  them  to  go,  and  often  select- 
ing their  most  extreme,  awkward,  emotion- 
ally confusing  work  for  his  final  cut.  The 
peculiarity  of  it:  George  C.  Scott  in  Dr. 
Strangelove,  Patrick  Magee  in  A  Clockwork 
Orange,  and  Jack  Nicholson  in  Tlie  Shin- 
ing, just  to  pick  the  most  blinding  exam- 
ples; Scott  complained  publicly  that  Stanley 
not  only  directed  him  way  over  the  top  but 
also  chose  the  most  overwrought  takes  for 
the  final  cut,  while  Nicholson's  performance 
turned  Tlie  Shining  into  a  movie  that  large- 
ly failed  as  a  genre  piece  but  worked  un- 
forgettably on  levels  where  it  didn't  matter 
that  there  was  a  huge  movie  star  and  great 
actor  on  the  premises  or  not.  (Nicholson 
did  some  of  his  greatest  work,  and  his  very 
worst,  in  Tlie  Shining,  and  the  same  could 
be  said  of  the  director.)  "That  was  much 
more  real,"  Stanley  told  him  after  a  take, 
"but  it  isn't  interesting."  Even  the  biggest 
stars  knew  what  it  was  like  to  be  a  pawn  in 
Stanley's  game:  "That  was  really  great.  Let's 
go  again." 

They'd  come  to  him  for  direction,  and 
he'd  send  them  back  to  work  to  find  out  for 
themselves.  On  A  Clockwork  Orange,  when 
Malcolm  McDowell  asked,  he  told  him, 
"Malcolm,  I'm  not  rada.  I  hired  you  to  do 
the  acting."  He  was  preparing  a  scene  for 
Spartacus  in  which  Laurence  Olivier  and 
Nina  Foch  are  sitting  in  their  seats  above 
the  arena  waiting  for  the  gladiators  to  enter 
and  fight  to  the  death,  and  Nina  Foch 
asked  him  for  motivation.  "What  am  I  do- 
ing, Stanley?"  she  asked,  and  Stanley  said, 
"You're  sitting  here  with  Larry  waiting  for 
the  gladiators  to  come  out." 


file  usual  M.O,  was  loi    I to  become 

incredibly  close  to  actors  during  shooting 
and  then  to  never  see  them  again.  A  lot  of 
aetois  were  terribly  hurt  by  this.  There's  no 
question  that  the  affection  he  felt  for  them 
and  the  inspiration  he  extended  to  them 
were  genuine,  and  this  made  the  break  even 
more  painful.  For  Stanley's  part,  I  never 
heard  him  speak  of  an  actor,  even  ones 
who  had  given  him  a  hard  time  or  been 
"disloyal"  once  the  film  came  out,  with 
anything  but  affection,  like  a  family  mem- 
ber who'd  gone  off,  dispelled  into  some 
new  career  phase,  even  if  it  was  oblivion. 


V 


He  told  me  once  that  if  he  hadn't  be- 
come a  director  he  might  have  liked 
being  a  conductor.  "They  get  to  play  the 
whole  orchestra,  and  they  get  plenty  of  ex- 
ercise," he  said,  waving  his  arms  a  bit, 
"and  most  of  them  live  to  be  really  old." 

As  I  write  this,  the  release  of  his  last  film 
is  two  months  away.  Only  a  few  people 
have  seen  it,  and  already  the  entertainment 
media  is  holding  itself  ready  to  be  shocked 
and  offended,  or  pretending  to.  "What's 
new?"  Stanley  would  have  said,  as  if  it  hard- 
ly warranted  the  question  mark.  He'd  begun 
planning  the  publicity  campaign  before  he 
completed  the  final  cut  of  the  film,  but  I'm 
sure  that  he'd  thought  about  it  for  years. 
Some  people  seem  to  think  that  he's  con- 
trolling it  from  the  grave.  It's  inconceivable 
to  anyone  who  knew  him  that  an  energy  like 
that  could  stop  just  because  death  has  oc- 
curred, that  it  isn't  going  on  in  some  form, 
circulating.  This  very  piece  is  evidence  of 
that,  since  it  was  his  idea  that  I  write  about 
him,  and  specifically  for  this  magazine. 

In  the  two  and  a  half  years  between  the 
time  I  declined  to  wash  and  rinse  for  fun 
and  the  moment  he  finished  editing,  we 
talked  only  a  few  times.  He  was  shooting 
for  most  of  it;  he  said  it  was  going  great,  no 
matter  what  I  might  have  heard.  He  was 
crazy  about  his  stars,  impressed  with  their 
professionalism  and  their  energy;  he  said 
they  energized  the  whole  crew  and  made 
his  job  a  lot  easier.  The  only  other  actor  I 
ever  heard  him  speak  quite  that  way  about 
was  James  Mason,  and  that  was  on  the  day 
after  Mason  died. 

In  the  beginning  of  January  my  wife 
and  I  received  a  gift  from  him,  a  book  of 
photographs  by  Jacques-Henri  Lartigue.  It 
was  a  Season's  Greetings  present,  the  first 
we'd  had  in  three  years,  since  he'd  gone 
into  production. 

"That  was  nice  of  him,"  my  wife  said. 
She'd  always  liked  Stanley. 

"Yes,  it  was,"  I  said,  thinking,  I  wonder 
what  he  wants. 

The  calls  started  up  again,  every  couple 


id 

.(it! 

■,:..;■ 


ugh 


'It 


of  days,  longer  and  longer.  He  sounded 
rifle;  it  was  great  to  be  on  the  blower  wi( 
him  again,  lor  the  lust  time  in  all  the  yea 
I'd  known  him,  he  actually  asked  me 
there  was  some  time  of  day  that  was  bett 
for  me  than  others,  so  we  did  most  of 
talking  in  the  mornings,  his  afternoor 
Did  I  happen  to  see  Norman  Mailei 
piece  in  The  New  York  Review  of  Boo 
about  Tom  Wolfe?  Brilliant.  He  must  he  pr 
ty  old  now,  Michael,  but  what  passion,  ani 
hear  your  buddy  Francis  just  won  a  hum 
from  Warner  Bros,  in  a  lawsuit,  and  Son 
body  ought  to  write  a  book  about  Bill  Cli 
ton  and  call  it  "He's  Gotta  Have  It." 

Then,  one  morning,  "Hey  Michael  [< 
ready  laughing],  I've  had  a  great  idea!  How 
you  like  to  write  the  exclusive  piece  on  Ey 
Wide  Shut  for  Vanity  Fair?" 

I  didn't  know.  I  was  working  on  som 
thing,  and  besides,  I  hadn't  written  a  ma 
zine  piece  in  20  years. 

"Listen,  it'll  be  fun. . . .  You  come  ov 
for  a  week,  I'll  show  you  the  movie,  y< 
can  talk  to  Tom  and  Nicole,  interview  m 
Wouldn't  you  like  to  do  that,  Michael?' 

"I  wouldn't  know  what  to  ask  you." 

"That's  all  right,  I'll  write  all  the  que 
tions. . . .  It'll  be  the  only  piece  about  tl 
movie,  you  know,  Michael,  a  really  clas. 
piece  of  PR."  (yuk  yuk  yuk),  and  "You' 
the  only  one  who  can  do  it  right,"  and 
perfect  for  you,"  and  "It'll  be  fun." 

I  said  that  since  it  was  him  I'd  thir 
about  it,  look  into  it.  I  decided  to  do  i 
and  called  him. 

"Gee,  that's  terrific,  Michael.  That  maki 
me  very  happy." 

"Me  too,  Stanley.  Now  you'll  find  ot 
what  I  really  think  of  you." 

Problems  arose,  as  I'd  told  Graydon  Ca 
ter,  the  editor  of  this  magazine,  th 
would.  Stanley  called  to  ask  me  what 
meant  by  the  word  "exclusive,"  and  I  tol 
him  I'd  never  used  the  word,  he  had;  wh; 
did  he  mean  by  "exclusive"?  Then  he  calle 
in  extreme  distress  and  said  that  he  couldn 
possibly  show  me  the  movie  in  time  for  m 
deadline— there  was  looping  to  be  done  an 
the  music  wasn't  finished,  lots  of  small  teel 
nical  fixes  on  color  and  sound;  would 
show  work  that  wasn't  finished?  He  had  t 
show  it  to  Tom  and  Nicole  because  the 
had  to  sign  nudity  releases,  and  to  Terr 
Semel  and  Bob  Daly  of  Warner  Bros.,  bi 
he  hated  it  that  he  had  to,  and  I  could  hea 
it  in  his  voice  that  he  did.  But  once  the 
screening  was  over,  and  the  response  to 
was  so  strong,  he  relented. 

"All  right,  Michael.  Let  me  see."  The 
we  talked  about  Hemingway,  how  you  coul 
never  break  that  prose  down  into  compc 
nents  that  could  be  studied  and  examine* 
and  qualified  and  expect  it  to  tell  you  ho\ 
it  worked  in  the  magical  way  that  it  did. 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


On  the  Friday  before  he  died,  I  was  driv- 
to  Vermont  on  the  New  York  State  Thru- 
y  when  my  phone  rang. 
"Michael,  can  you  drive  and  talk?" 
"Yes,  Stanley.  And  chew  gum." 
"No,  I  mean,  is  it  legal?" 
He  told  me  it  would  be  all  right  if  I 
ne  over  in  two  weeks  to  look  at  the 
>vie  and  "interview"  him.  When  I  asked 
n  if  this  was  his  last  word  on  the  subject, 
laughed  and  said,  "Maybe." 
i  Then  he  told  me  about  a  friend  of  his,  a 
udio  head  who'd  just  bought  an  apart- 
:nt  in  New  York.  He  told  me  how  much 
'd  paid  for  it,  and  said  that  he  was  the 
3t  Jew  ever  admitted  to  the  building. 
"Can  you  believe  that?  What  is  it,  1999? 
id  they  never  let  a  Jew  in  there  before?" 
In  Holland,  he'd  heard,  there  was  a  soc- 
r  team  called  Ajax  that  had  once  had  a 
wish  player,  and  ever  since  then  Dutch 
inheads  would  go  to  all  the  team's  match- 
and  make  a  loud  hissing  noise,  meant  to 
present  the  sound  of  gas  escaping  into 
e  death  chambers.  "And  that's  Holland, 
ichael.  A  civilized  country."  Laughing. 
We  talked  for  90  or  100  miles,  from  he- 
re Utica  until  my  exit  at  Albany.  I  told 
m  I  needed  both  hands  now,  and  that  I'd 
ill  him  when  I  got  home  on  Sunday. 


All  the  things  that  people  believe  they 
know  about  Stanley  they  get  from  the 
press,  and  the  entertainment  press  at  that. 
Almost  none  of  these  reporters  ever  met 
him,  because  he  thought  you  had  to  be 
crazy  to  do  interviews  unless  you  had  a 
picture  coming  out,  and  even  then  it  had 
to  be  very  carefully  managed.  It  wasn't 
personal  with  him,  but  I  think  it  became 
personal  for  a  lot  of  them.  They  work 
hard,  much  too  hard,  the  belt  is  moving 
faster  and  faster,  carrying  increasingly  emp- 
ty forms,  silly  and  brutal  and  thankfully 
evanescent  entertainments.  You  can't  go  to 
the  movies  anymore  without  slipping  in  all 
the  Pavlovian  drool  running  down  the 
aisles,  big  show  business  Manifest.  This  is 
the  world  that  Stanley  chose  to  become  a 
master  of,  and  one  of  the  ways  he  did  it 
was  by  keeping  himself  to  himself.  So  I 
can  see,  in  a  time  when  so  many  celebrities 
are  so  eager  to  hurl  themselves  into  our 
headlights,  where  anyone  who  doesn't  want 
to  talk  with  the  entertainment  press  might 
seem  eccentric,  reclusive,  and  misanthrop- 
ic; crazy,  autocratic,  and  humorless;  cold 
and  phobic  and  arrogant. 

But  I  must  say  that  a  lot  of  people  took 
it  hard;  people  he'd  known,  some  of  them 
for  40  years,  or  people  he  hadn't  seen  in  a 


decade;  certainly  his  family,  since  he'd  been 
a  loving  husband  and  father— amazing,  the 
number  of  people  who  loved  him,  and  the 
way  they  loved  him,  and  the  size  of  the 
hole  he  made  in  our  lives  by  dying.  He  was 
so  alive  to  us  that  it  was  hard  to  believe, 
and  then  there  was  that  other  thing 
("We've  seen  it  in  Homer,  Michael"),  peo- 
ple regarding  their  dead  heroes  and  think- 
ing, If  it  can  do  this  to  him,  imagine  what 
it  can  do  to  us. 

He'd  never  talk  about  his  movies  while 
he  was  making  them,  and  he  didn't  like 
talking  about  them  afterward  very  much, 
even  to  friends,  except  maybe  to  mention 
the  grosses.  Most  of  all,  he  didn't  want  to 
talk  about  their  "meaning,"  because  he  be- 
lieved so  passionately  in  their  meaning  that 
to  try  to  talk  about  it  could  only  spoil  it  for 
him.  He  might  tell  you  how  he  did  it,  but 
never  why.  I  think  that  he,  an  arch-materialist 
(maybe)  and  an  artist  of  the  material  world, 
made  the  single  most  inspired  spiritual  image 
in  all  of  film,  the  Star  Child  watching  with 
equanimity  the  timeless  empty  galaxies  of 
existence-after-existence,  waiting  patiently 
once  again  to  be  born.  Somebody  asked  him 
how  he  ever  thought  of  the  ending  of  2001. 
"I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "How  does  any- 
body ever  think  of  anything?"  D 


oiir 


Seasons 


■tinued  from  page  i68  coffee  to  restau- 
nts.  The  Wechsler  children  were  big  share- 
>lders  in  R.A. 

We  were  all  shocked  to  hear  of  Brody's 
iminent  divorce,  and  we  did  not  share 
s  illusion  that  he  would  be  allowed  to 
ly  or  even  to  put  together  a  deal  to  buy 
A.  However,  having  been  married  to 
arlene  Gray  Brody  for  35  years  now, 
id  with  his  huge  successes  at  Gallagher's 
eak  House  and  the  Oyster  Bar  &  Res- 
urant  in  Grand  Central  Terminal  (both 

which  he  has  just  sold  to  his  employ- 
si,  Brody  undoubtedly  made  the  right 
loice  for  himself,  even  if  he  did  kill  our 
ilden  goose. 

I  left  Restaurant  Associates  in  1964  to 
)rk  for  Brody,  so  I  did  not  witness  the 
mr  Seasons'  decade  of  decline  from  the 
side.  As  the  restaurant  attracted  more 
id  more  tourists  and  corporate  parties,  it 
came  more  and  more  declasse  in  the 
es  of  hip  New  Yorkers.  Although  some  of 
e  original  crew  lingered  for  a  while,  they 
adually  defected  for  more  satisfying  posi- 
>ns.  Baum  himself  left  in  1970.  Remark- 
g  on  the  lack  of  taste  of  R.A.  corporate 
wcomers,  Lester  Klepper,  who  remained 
e  general  counsel  for  36  years,  through 

regimes,  until  he  retired  in  1991,  says, 


"Eventually,  I  think,  I  was  the  only  one  in 
the  company  who  wore  natural  fibers." 

The  good  days  were  over.  Soon  there 
was  terrible  garish  carpeting  on  the  stair- 
way, and  the  worn  leather  upholstery  was 
replaced  with  plastic.  In  the  Grill,  a  divider 
to  shut  off  the  noise  of  the  bar  from  the 
dining  area  consisted  of  pots  of  philoden- 
drons  hung  on  an  iron  grid.  And  still  the 
Grill  remained  unpopular. 

No  act  of  R.A.'s  new  management, 
headed  by  Martin  Brody  (no  relation  to 
Jerome),  Max  Pine,  and  Richard  Blumen- 
thal,  became  them  more  than  the  selling  of 
the  Four  Seasons'  lease  to  Tom  Margittai 
and  Paul  Kovi  in  1973.  By  that  time  the 
handsome  and  urbane  Margittai,  who  had 
worked  at  several  R.A.  restaurants,  was  the 
company's  vice  president  in  charge  of 
white-tablecloth  restaurants.  In  1966,  he 
brought  over  Paul  Kovi,  a  fellow  Hungarian 
and  a  colleague  from  several  New  York  ho- 
tels. The  witty  and  implacable  Kovi  be- 
came the  director,  replacing  George  Lang, 
who,  though  he  would  later  have  success 
with  such  restaurants  as  Cafe  des  Artistes 
in  New  York  and  Gundel  in  Budapest,  had 
been  unable  to  reverse  the  Four  Seasons' 
decline. 

With  the  sale  of  R.A.'s  valuable  low- 
rent  lease  to  Margittai  and  Kovi,  Klepper 
says,  "my  recollection  is  that  we  practical- 
ly gave  away  the  Four  Seasons  for  the  val- 


ue of  its  wine  cellar."  And  thus  began  the 
restaurant's  second  life. 

Describing  the  strategy  he  and  Kovi  had 
worked  out  for  their  new  venture,  Mar- 
gittai listed  their  goals.  Most  important  was 
defining  who  their  prime  customers  would 
be:  Young  Turks  in  business  who  would  have 
liked  to  go  to  "21"  but  were  not  yet  quite 
rich  and  famous  enough  to  do  so,  because 
they  soon  would  be;  women  in  business,  be- 
cause they  represented  part  of  the  emerging 
women's-lib  movement;  people  in  the  com- 
munications media,  because  they  could  make 
the  restaurant  visible;  members  of  the  food 
and  wine  industries,  because  the  new  own- 
ers needed  their  support  and  respect;  and, 
finally,  members  of  the  press,  because  they 
could  put  a  message  across  (the  owners  even 
offered  them  a  25  percent  discount,  which 
only  a  few  were  ethical  enough  to  resist). 

With  chefs  Seppi  Renggli  (now  at  R.A.) 
and  Christian  "Hitsch"  Albin  (still  at  the 
Four  Seasons),  and  with  the  polished  maitre 
d'  Oreste  Carnevali  (now  at  "21")  to  restruc- 
ture the  service,  the  new  team  turned  to  two 
innovative  admen,  who  had  worked  for  the 
restaurant  since  1960.  Copywriter  Ron  Hol- 
land and  art  director  George  Lois  created  a 
simple,  powerful  ad  that  they  ran  as  a  full 
page  in  Tlie  New  York  limes.  It  showed 
Margittai  and  Kovi  shaking  hands  in  front 
of  the  52nd  Street  entrance  to  the  restau- 


JGUSI     19  9  9 


VANITY     FA 


Four  S 


asons 


mi:  that  "the  two  of  us"  were 
ists  l  hat's  how  we  said  the 
restau  ml  was  being  run  by  individuals,  not 
by  .1  corporation,"  Lois  explains. 

I  hej  launched  a  program  to  give  the 
Grill  Room  the  style  of  such  European 
counterparts  .is  the  Connaught  Grill  in 
London  and  Harry's  Bar  in  Venice.  They 
courted  Michael  Korda  and  through  him  a 
nucleus  of  other  editors  from  Simon  & 
Schuster. 

"Gaining  the  approval  of  Leo  Lerman, 
the  James  Beard  of  the  cultural  scene," 
Margittai  says,  referring  to  the  late  editor  of 
Vanity  Fair,  who  was  then  features  editor  of 
Vogue,  "we  managed  to  get  the  blessings 
and  business  of  the  Conde  Nast  publica- 
tions. We  were  also  befriended  by  Nora 
Ephron,  then  known  for  her  essays  in  Es- 
quire, and  that  led  to  the  famous  power- 
lunch  article  in  that  magazine  written  by 
Lee  Eisenberg." 

Credit  for  the  term  "power  lunch"  as  it 
relates  to  the  Four  Seasons  Grill  usually 
goes  to  that  October  1979  issue  of  Esquire. 
However,  two  years  earlier,  in  1977,  Michael 
Korda,  in  a  column  headed  "Le  Plat  Du 
Jour  Is  Power"  in  TJie  New  York  Times, 
had  written,  "At  present,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  most  powerful  place  to  eat  lunch 
in  town  (apart  from  the  private  dining 
rooms  of  the  more  interesting  corporate 
presidents  and  bankers)  is  the  grill  room  of 
The  Four  Seasons."  He  mentioned  seeing 
there  on  a  single  day,  among  others,  Jason 
Epstein  of  Random  House,  Phyllis  Grann 
of  Putnam,  James  Silberman  of  Summit 
Books,  and  literary  agents  Mort  Janklow 
and  Lynn  Nesbit.  Korda  also  noted  shrewd- 
ly, "The  most  powerful  person  is  the  one 
who  can  order  the  meal  with  the  lowest 
number  of  calories." 

Korda  had  thereby  nailed  the  menu  phi- 
losophy that  still  holds  sway  today.  De- 
parting from  the  lavishness  of  Pool  Room 
dishes,  Renggli  and  Albin  created  simple 
but  carefully  prepared  food  that  required 
no  tableside  service,  thereby  eliminating 
distractions  for  deal-makers,  most  of  whom 
want  to  be  in  and  out  in  an  hour  and  40 
minutes.  There  are  always  enough  choices 
for  those  with  more  opulent  tastes,  for  ex- 
ample risotto  (costing  as  much  as  $125  if 
made  with  white  truffles  and  served  as  a 
main  course),  foie  gras  ($27.50  as  an  appe- 
tizer), crabmeat  cakes  ($38.50),  and  fillet  of 
bison  ($46)  from  the  Virginia  ranch  of  Ed- 
gar M.  Bronfman. 

Typical  fare  includes  the  almost  iconic 
baked  potato  with  olive  oil,  tuna  carpaccio, 
stir-fried  chicken  salad,  and  many  fish  and 
vegetable  plates.  To  bring  business  back  to 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


the  Grill,  Margittai  and  Kovi  at  first  priced 
the  menu  there  below  thai  of  the  Pool 
Room  No  longer.  "Why  should  we  charge 
less  tin  what  is  now  our  most  desirable 
space':'"  Niccolini  asks. 

"I  was  once  very  depressed  there  and 
wanted  to  eat  fattening  food,  but  Julian 
dissuaded  me,"  says  Phyllis  Grann.  who 
developed  the  Four  Seasons  habit  when 
she  was  at  Simon  &  Schuster.  Now  there 
less  frequently  because  as  president  of 
Penguin  Putnam  she  has  offices  down- 
town on  Hudson  Street,  she  still  tries  to 
get  Table  No.  4  once  a  week,  traffic  per- 
mitting. "They  know  never  to  give  me  a 
roll,  and  in  the  early  days  they  would  mail 
the  check  to  me  to  avoid  the  awkwardness 
of  a  woman  paying  for  a  man— now  no 
longer  a  problem.  It  also  usually  saves  me 
a  few  phone  calls,  as  I  see  people  I  want 
to  talk  to.  As  for  price,  it's  really  the  same 
as  other  expensive  places." 

Just  as  they  keep  Michael  Eisner's  post- 
coronary-bypass  diet  in  their  computer,  so 
the  current  management  cossets  Bill  Blass 
at  Table  No.  22.  Following  the  designer's 
stroke  last  December,  Niccolini  and  von 
Bidder  watch  over  him  carefully.  "They 
won't  let  me  order  fettuccine  with  cheese 
and  butter  and  white  truffles,  although  I 
can  have  crab  cakes  and  stone  crab  and,  at 
night,  baked  potato  with  caviar,"  Blass  says. 
"There's  a  sense  of  amusement  there,  de- 
spite it  being  a  business  rendezvous,  and 
the  food  is  better  than  at  most  places.  I'll 
never  not  go  back." 

To  regain  a  reputation  for  fine  food, 
Kovi  and  Margittai  made  the  most  of  the 
nouvelle  cuisine  trend,  inviting  French  chefs 
such  as  Gaston  Lenotre  and  the  Troisgros 
brothers  to  cook  for  two-week  gourmet  fes- 
tivals and  asking  the  supermacho  Paul  Bo- 
cuse  to  produce  a  "women's  dinner."  They 
also  hosted  many  wine  tastings  and  found 
suppliers  to  ship  in  such  exotica  as  Louisiana 
crayfish,  Oregon  morels,  and  many  ingre- 
dients from  France  and  Italy.  Even  so,  Mar- 
gittai says,  "most  critics  never  cottoned  to 
us." 

In  1979,  five  and  a  half  years  after  Margit- 
tai and  Kovi  were  installed,  I  cottoned  to 
them  to  the  tune  of  two  stars  out  of  a  pos- 
sible four.  Then  the  restaurant  critic  of  The 
New  York  Times,  I  said,  in  sum,  that  the 
Four  Seasons  was  very  good  and  promis- 
ing, but  somewhat  uneven  and  disappoint- 
ing with  certain  house  classics.  I  had  a  very 
tactful,  restrained  response  from  the  new 
team.  They  thanked  me  for  my  "construc- 
tive" comments  and  vowed  to  turn  the  two 
stars  into  three,  "God  willing,"  in  the  com- 
ing year. 

So  successful  were  their  efforts  that  for 
22  years  Kovi  and  Margittai  were  the  fa- 
vorites of  the  power-lunch  crowd.  Their  ide- 


',1; 


UK 


31 


al  successors  were  the  current  co-directo 
Alex  von  Bidder  and  Julian  Niccolini.  V 
Bidder,  4X,  whose  lather  was  in  the  Sw 
national  tourist  office  and  who  trained 
many  prestigious  European  and  Americ, 
restaurants  and  hotels,  joined  Kovi  ai 
Margittai  in  1976.  A  year  later,  Niccolii 
46,  came  to  the  Four  Seasons  after  havii 
trained  at  several  respected  hotel  scho<  ft 
and  done  a  stint  at  the  Palace,  a  luxe  r< 
taurant  on  59th  Street. 

Finding  the  backing  to  buy  the  lea  to 
proved  so  difficult,  von  Bidder  says,  th  jk 
they  enlisted  the  aid  of  the  Bronfmans.  E 
fore  being  able  to  buy  the  restaurant,  Se 
gram  needed  a  special  dispensation  fro 
the  state  law  that  prohibits  liquor  who 
salers  from  also  having  an  interest  in  a  reu 
establishment,  such  as  a  restaurant.  Lobr. 
ists  for  Seagram  had  an  exception  pass< 
stipulating  that  the  restriction  would  not  a 
ply  to  a  landmark  restaurant  in  a  buildii 
on  the  corner  of  Park  Avenue  and  52i 
Street.  The  Four  Seasons  interior  (as  well 
the  entire  building)  had  been  accorded  Ian 
mark  status  in  1989  by  the  New  York  Ci 
Landmarks  Preservation  Commission. 

As  the  Four  Seasons  enters  the  new  m 
lennium,  it  looks  remarkably  as  it  did  ori 
inally.  The  food  I  have  had  during  rece: 
visits  has  been  more  consistently  excellei 
than  it  ever  was,  and  the  menu  has  retains 
its  character.  Not  so  Joe  Baum's  hospitab 
policy  on  wine  pricing.  In  a  recent  Ne 
York  Times  sneak  preview  of  a  Zagat  su 
vey  which  compares  wine  prices  in  Ne 
York  restaurants,  the  Four  Seasons  ranke 
among  the  10  most  expensive.  The  faithfi 
clientele,  however,  remains  generally  inure 
to  price. 

The  Pool  Room,  after  20  years  of  beiri 
in  the  shade  of  the  Grill  Room,  seems  t 
be  making  a  comeback.  Governor  Georg 
Pataki,  a  regular,  prefers  a  poolside  tab 
close  to  the  door.  Phyllis  Lambert  choose 
the  north  side  of  the  pool,  while  real-estal 
tycoon  Leona  Helmsley  insists  on  a  nort 
corner  table,  away  from  the  pool. 

Andre  Leon  Talley,  Vogue's  flamboyar 
editor-at-large,  recently  went  as  far  as  to  d( 
clare  the  Grill  Room  passe.  "Not  the  arch 
tecture,  of  course,"  he  explained.  "Johr 
son's  work  still  looks  marvelous.  What 
passe  is  those  power  mongers  like  Moi 
Zuckerman  and  Henry  Kissinger  oglin 
each  other.  It's  no  longer  cool  to  sit  there 
The  Pool  Room  is  beautiful,  even  with  fak 
cherry  trees.  I  love  the  burble  of  the  watei 
People  there  don't  care  about  being  seer 
My  advice  is  to  use  the  Park  Avenue  er 
trance  and  turn  left  at  the  Picasso  curtain 
The  Grill  is  the  80s.  The  Pool  Room  is  th 
21st  century!" 

Niccolini  responds,  "We're  waiting  an 
hoping.  It  would  be  our  dream  come  true! 

So  it's  160  seasons,  and  still  counting.  I 

AUGUST     199 


;dits 


aatricia  Dull 


kNTiNin  i)  i  rom  paoe  is8  introduction  to 
ke  Medavoy  from  Chris  Dodd.  Medavoy, 
■n  the  production  chief  of  Orion  Pictures, 
itle  he  had  previously  held  at  United 
tists,  was  associated  with  such  hits  as 
e  Flew  over  the  Cuckoo's  Nest,  Annie  Hall, 
cky,  and  Platoon.  He  was  also  the  nation- 
finance  chair  of  the  Hart  campaign.  Nine 
tnths  after  meeting  Duff,  in  1984,  he  left 
,  wife  for  her. 

In  part  through  Medavoy,  Duff  contin- 
d  to  get  acting  roles:  bit  parts  in  the  TV 
wies  Fatal  Vision  and  Blade  in  Hong  Kong, 
d  in  the  feature  film  About  Last  Night 
which  she  plays  an  anonymous  woman 
10  picks  up  Rob  Lowe  outside  a  bar.  (She 
s  three  lines:  "Are  you  going  in?"  "I  real- 
like you  a  lot."  And  "What?!")  She  also 
peared  in  Gimme  an  F'  (the  second  in- 
Jlment  in  the  "T&A  Academy"  series)  and 
C.  Cab,  and  had  guest  roles  on  the  TV 
ows  Moonlighting  and  Hotel.  But  after  she 
:came  Patricia  Duff  Medavoy,  the  role 
at  would  increasingly  define  her  was  that 
Hollywood  wife.  The  couple  was  married 
May  1986  in  a  huge,  star-studded  wed- 
ng  at  the  former  Harold  Lloyd  Estate, 
lere  Patricia  wore  a  tight,  midriff-baring 
ess  that  was  the  talk  of  the  town.  "The 
irase  'sprayed  on'  comes  to  mind,"  says 
meone  who  attended. 

/Tedavoy  was  heavily  involved  in  Demo- 
fXcratic  politics,  and  the  couple  became 
rnificant  brokers  in  the  romance  between 
ollywood  and  Washington,  holding  fund- 
isers,  putting  candidates  up  in  their  home, 
aking  introductions.  (Their  most  fateful 
ilitical  act  was  taking  Gary  Hart  along  as 
guest  to  a  party  in  Aspen,  at  the  home 
rocker  Don  Henley,  on  New  Year's  Day 
87.  It  was  there  that  Hart  met  Donna 
ice,  the  lissome  blonde  with  whom  he 
)uld  torpedo  his  political  career.)  In  Clin- 
n's  first  campaign,  they  were  among  his 
rliest  supporters  in  Hollywood— and  were 
lick  to  let  everyone  know  it.  After  Clinton's 
sction,  Medavoy  was  rumored  to  close  an 
icanny  number  of  phone  calls  with  a  hur- 
;d  announcement  that  he  had  to  run— the 
esident  was  on  the  other  line. 
Patricia  labored  to  become  a  political 
>wer  in  her  own  right,  co-founding,  with 
her  refugees  from  Hart's  circle,  the  Show 
jalition,  a  sort  of  political-education  fe- 
rn for  the  film  community,  which  enrolled 
id-level  Hollywood— writers,  actors,  as- 
ring  directors— and  invited  politicians  to 
eak  at  its  functions.  In  her  prime  there, 
uff  was  skilled  in  the  subtle  art  of  capital- 
ng  on  one  power  center's  awe  of,  and  il- 
sions  about,  another.  Washington  readily 
cepted  the  idea  that  this  glamorous,  mon- 


eyed, well-connected  woman  was  someone 
who  had  to  be  cultivated  in  the  Hollywood 
money  chase,  just  as  Hollywood  accepted 
her  self-presentation  as  a  former  political 
consultant  who  was  hugely  connected  in 
Washington. 

Shrewder  observers  of  the  California  po- 
litical scene  scoffed  at  the  idea  that  "Show 
Co"  was  a  power  to  contend  with.  "It  was 
the  most  extraordinary  example  of  wasted 
political  energy,"  says  someone  well  versed 
in  Los  Angeles  fund-raising.  "It  didn't  acti- 
vate people,  nor  did  it  raise  money.  And 
she  dragged  any  important  politician  who 
could  breathe  in  front  of  it.  And  they  came!" 
However,  this  person  adds,  with  some  ad- 
miration, "She  really  knew  how  to  use  it  as 
a  platform." 

Duff  defends  Show  Coalition's  role  as  a 
"catalyst"  in  persuading  film  people  to  get 
involved  in  national  politics,  and  also  notes 
that  it  performed  community  service  in  the 
South-Central  neighborhood  of  L.A.  "We 
weren't  just  talking  about  issues  in  the  ab- 
stract," she  says,  "but  also  about  working  in 
our  own  community."  On  the  national  level, 
"I  do  think  we  had  an  enormous  amount  of 
influence  on  getting  people  involved,  getting 
them  primed  to  give  money." 

But  gossip  was  rife  over  power  struggles 
between  Patricia  and  the  other  big  play- 
ers in  Democratic  Hollywood,  especially 
the  Hollywood  Women's  Political  Commit- 
tee and  the  circle  around  Tom  Hayden  and 
Jane  Fonda.  Which  group  could  inspire  the 
most  assiduous  courtship  by  the  most  im- 
portant senators?  Who  would  be  invited  to 
serve  as  liaison  between  Hollywood  celebri- 
ties and  the  party's  1988  convention?  "There 
was  just  a  lot  of  tension,  because  she  was 
so  concerned  that  she  be  seen  as  the  most 
influential  Hollywood  political  person,"  re- 
calls one  old  Democratic  associate.  Says 
another,  "I'm  sure  there's  some  great  old 
MGM  movie,  Tlie  Snake  Pit  or  something, 
that  would  compare"  to  the  venom  of  these 
battles. 

This  was  when  associates  began  to  notice 
a  suspicious  streak  in  Duff.  "She  al- 
ways thought  people  were  out  to  get  her, 
and  she'd  turn  on  people,"  says  a  longtime 
Hollywood  Democrat.  "She  was  extremely 
paranoid —  You  just  never  knew  on  a  giv- 
en day  when  she  would  be  unbelievably 
sweet  and  fun,  or  when  on  the  next  day  she 
would  think  you  were  plotting  against  her." 
This  period  was  also  when  friends  began 
noticing  a  tempestuous  quality  to  Duff's 
days.  "She  seemed  to  thrive  on  chaos,  in  a 
sense,"  says  a  friend  from  this  era.  "The 
phone  would  be  constantly  ringing:  'You 
have  42  messages.'" 

"It's  always  just  a  whirlwind  at  Patricia's 
house,"  says  a  more  recent  friend,  "of  ac- 


Fashion 


Cover:  For  Edward  Norton's  Helmut  Lang  shirt  and 
swealer-vest,  go  lo  wwwhelmutlang.com;  Polo  Jeans  Co. 
Ralph  Lauren  pants  from  Polo  Jeans  Co.  stores  nation- 
wide; Salvatore  Ferragamo  shoes  from  Salvalore  Ferra- 
gamo  stores  nationwide,  L'Wren  Scott  for  Vernon  Jolly. 
Page  42:  Bottom,  see  credits  for  cover  Page  46: 
Marjorie  Williams  styled  by  Barbara  Zalcoff  for  the 
Artist  Agency  Page  113:  Daniel  Lapaine's  Perry  Ellis 
Portfolio  shirt  from  selected  Bloomingdale's  stores.  Pages 
128-29:  Edward  Norton's  Prada  shirt  and  pants  from 
Prada,  Beverly  Hills.  Page  131:  J.  Crew  T-shirt  from 
J.  Crew  stores  nationwide,  Yves  Saint  Laurent  Rive  Gauche 
pants  from  Yves  Saint  Laurent  Rive  Gauche,  NYC  Page 
132:  Dolce  &  Gabbana  sweater  from  the  Dolce  &  Gab- 
bana  boutique,  N.Y.C ,  for  Dockers  K-l  Khakis  pants,  call 
800-DOCKERS;  Salvatore  Ferragamo  shoes  from  Salva- 
tore Ferragamo  stores  nationwide  Page  133:  Prada 
|ackel  and  T-shirt  from  Prada,  NYC  Page  135:  Saffron 
Burrows's  Donna  Karan  lop  from  the  Donna  Karan  bou- 
tique, Manhasset,  NY  Pages  158-59:  Vinnie Jones's 
Hackett  clothing  and  accessories,  from  Hacketl,  London. 
Pages  160-61:  Leda  Gorgone  for  Daniele  Forsythe. 

Beauty  and  Grooming 

Cover:  Edward  Norton's  hair  styled  with  Polo  Sport 
Alcohol-Free  Hair  Gel;  Max  Pmnell  for  Bumble  &  Bumble, 
Jorge  Serio  for  Garren  New  York  Page  46:  Marjorie 
Williams's  hair  and  makeup  by  the  Artist  Agency  Mimi 
Sheraton's  hair  by  Younghee  for  the  D.  J.  Rubin  Salon, 
makeup  by  Sara  Johnson  for  Sarah  Laird  Page  82: 
Albert  Brooks's  hair  by  Nina  Kraft;  grooming  by  Linda 
Arnold  Page  113:  Daniel  Lapaine's  grooming  by 
David  Cox  for  Bumble  &  Bumble.  Page  120:  Russ 
Smith's  grooming  by  Kat  James  for  Garren  New  York. 
Page  135:  Saffron  Burrows's  hair  styled  with  Aveda 
Phomollienl  All  makeup  from  Aveda.  On  her  cheeks, 
Blush  Minus  Mineral  Oil  Vapor,  on  her  eyes,  Shadow 
Plus  Vitamins  in  Pinkglow  Ray  Allington  for  Aveda,  Kimbra 
for  Artist  Group  Management  Pages  158-59:  Vinnie 
Jones's  hair  by  James  Alan  Taylor  for  Art  and  Commerce; 
grooming  by  Kay  Montana  for  Slreelers  Pages  160- 
61:  Younghee  for  the  D  J  Rubin  Salon,  Sara  Johnson  for 
Sarah  Laird  Pages  170-79:  John  Selaro  for  Cloutier. 

Photographs  and  Miscellany 

Cover:  Stefan  Beckman  for  Exposure,  NYC  Page 
22:  From  Pictorial  Press  Page  46:  Top,  from  Corbis- 
Oulline  Page  62:  From  Corbis  Page  66:  Top  left, 
from  the  Temple  University  Libraries,  Urban  Archives; 
right,  from  Sygma  Page  70:  Top,  from  the  Philadel- 
phia Daily  News,  bottom,  from  the  Temple  University 
Libraries,  Urban  Archives  Page  73:  Top,  from  Reuters/ 
Archive  Photos,  bottom,  from  Gamma  Liaison  Page  102: 
Bottom,  from  A.  P. /Wide  World  Photos  Page  120:  Bot- 
tom left,  by  Ray  Burmislon,  second  from  left,  from  the 
Art  Department  Page  124:  By  Ed  Bohon/Slock  Boston 
(Union  hat),  Matthew  Borkowski/Stock  Boston  (CD- 
ROM),  Marci  Brennan  |Shih  Tzu,  bottom),  Steve  Bronstein/ 
Image  Bank  (lightbulb),  Mark  Burnett/Stock  Boston  (Con- 
federate hat),  Barbara  J  Feigles/Stock  Boston  (revolver), 
Chris  George  (Shih  Tzu,  lop),  courtesy  of  Kinko's  |apron|, 
by  Bill  Losh/FPG  |bald  man),  Gregory  Pace/Sygma 
(Channing),  from  Photofesl  (Mouse  ears),  courtesy  of 
Prada/I.PI.  (shoe),  by  Lisa  Rose/Globe  Photos  (Strei- 
sand). Cylla  Von  Tredemann/Photofesl  \Jekyll  &  Hyde). 
Pages  136-37:  From  the  Everett  Collection  Pages 
138-39:  From  Photofesl  Pages  142-43:  From  Bison 
Archives  (gymnast|,  from  the  Everett  Collection  (Pickens), 
from  Movie  Still  Archives  (Douglas,  Nicholson),  from 
Neal  Peters  (Dullea),  from  Photofest  (Lyon,  McDowell), 
from  Pictorial  Press  (Ermeyl  Pages  148-49:  From 
AMPAS  (Dr  Strange/ove,  The  Ki//mg|,  from  the  Everett 
Collection  (Barry  lyndon),  from  the  Kobal  Collection 
12001),  from  Movie  Still  Archives  [A  Clockwork  Orange), 
courtesy  of  Warner  Bros  [Eyes  Wide  Shui)  Page  151: 
Courtesy  of  Warner  Bros  Pag*  155:  Bottom,  from 
Celebrity  Photo  Page  157:  Top,  from  Globe  Photos 
Pages  162-63:  All  except  Seagram  Building,  Pool 
Room,  and  Grill  Room,  courtesy  of  the  four  Seasons, 
center  left.  ©  by  Eslo  Photographies  Page  165:  All 
courtesy  of  the  Four  Seasons  Pag*  175:  Courtesy  of 
the  Siegfried  &  Roy  Archives  (Chico,  leo,  the  Pope,  Mac 
Lome,  Jackson)  Page  200:  horn  Icon  International 


J  G  U  S  T     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Patricin  Dull 


ag  late  and  canceled  appoint- 

d  minds,  and  yelling  at 

mis  because  the  towels  aren't  lined 

Up  JU  4  so  " 

she  thought  of  herself  as  being  in  a 
gilded  cage"  and  compared  herself  to  Nora, 
in  Ibsen's  play  A  Doll's  House,  says  an  inti- 
mate from  her  California  days.  Dull"  wanted 
to  be  something  more  substantial  than  a 
Hollywood  wife,  and  made  constant  feints 
in  the  direction  of  another  career.  At  one 
point  she  and  a  friend  started  a  corporate- 
consulting  firm  that  lasted  about  a  year. 
She  produced  a  movie,  Limit  Up,  starring 
Nancy  Allen  and  Dean  Stockwell,  but  it 
went  straight  to  video.  ("In  a  man's  world," 
begins  the  advertising  copy  on  the  video's 
box,  "a  working  girl  can  use  a  little  magic 
to  get  ahead.")  She  published  an  article  in 
Premiere  magazine.  Around  the  time  of 
Clinton's  first  inaugural  she  founded  a  phil- 
anthropic organization  called  the  Common 
Good  to  promote  community  service,  but 
it  never  really  got  off  the  ground. 

Later,  after  she  took  up  with  Perelman, 
she  would  become  an  editor-at-large  at  Pre- 
miere, of  which  he  was  by  then  part  owner. 
She  would  start  a  production  company.  So- 
journer, but  never  use  it.  She  would  con- 
sider a  career  in  TV  news,  going  to  a  CBS 
training  facility  in  Dallas  for  evaluation, 
and  doing  a  brief  stint  at  a  Perelman- 
controlled  station  in  Monterey.  She  would 
talk  about  entering  law  school  or  business 
school,  but  never  go.  She  would  become 
president  of  the  Revlon  Foundation— a  po- 
sition, in  her  husband's  organization,  that 
ended  abruptly  along  with  the  marriage. 

"She  was  too  good-looking  for  her  own 
good,"  says  a  friend  from  the  Medavoy 
days,  "and  too  smart  for  her  own  good.  If 
she'd  been  less  smart,  she  wouldn't  have 
minded.  And  if  she'd  been  less  good- 
looking,  she  would  have  gotten  something 
else  going." 

As  she  neared  her  40s,  her  major  occu- 
pation was  supervising  the  construction  of 
the  Medavoys'  $5  million  house  on  Hazen 
Drive  in  Beverly  Hills.  It  was  described  in  a 
1992  story  in  W,  in  which  Duff  spoke  of 
entertaining  the  likes  of  Warren  Beatty,  Dus- 
tin  Hoffman,  and  Richard  Dreyfuss.  But 
she  sighed  over  the  trials  of  building  such  a 
vast  house.  "It  took  so  much  work,"  she 
said,  "I  actually  developed  chronic  fatigue 
syndrome  while  I  was  doing  it." 

What  she  really  wanted,  she  told  all  her 
friends,  was  a  child;  she  felt,  accord- 
ing to  an  intimate,  that  a  child  might  be 
"the  thing  that  would  validate  her  life."  Me- 
davoy, who  had  an  adult  child  from  a  pre- 
vious marriage,  didn't  flatly  refuse,  but  he 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


dragged  his  feet.  In    1990  In-  bad  become 

chairman  ol  [riStai  Pictures,  which  had 
just  been  bought  by  Sony,  and  he  was  very 
caught  up  in  work.  She  complained  that  he- 
was  distant,  uncaring,  emotionally  abusive. 

And  so  she  moved  out  to  send  him  a 
message,  she  told  friends,  that  she  wouldn't 
wait  forever.  In  the  legend  according  to  Pa- 
tricia, she  left  Medavoy  in  mid-1993;  some 
months  later,  she  was  taken  to  a  party  by 
Melanie  Griffith,  who  was  soon  to  start 
modeling  for  Revlon  and  who  introduced 
her  to  Perelman.  This  decorous  version  pro- 
poses a  decent  interval  between  the  rejec- 
tion of  Medavoy  and  the  merger  with  Perel- 
man. But  in  fact  she  and  Perelman  had  be- 
gun a  passionate  affair  the  previous  winter. 
It  began  when  she  approached  him  during 
a  Revlon  charity  ball  in  L.A.,  and  the  two 
discovered  what  one  source  calls  "giant 
chemistry." 

Medavoy,  who  declined  to  be  interviewed 
for  this  article,  was  apparently  stunned. 
"She  comes  and  she  says,  'You  know  what, 
I'm  not  happy,  I  need  to  have  a  simple 
life,'"  says  a  source  close  to  Medavoy.  "She 
says,  'I'm  trying  to  find  myself.  I  had  to 
build  this  house,  it  made  me  crazy,  I  need 
to  go  travel  more,  I  need  to  not  be  in  your 
shadow.'  He's  going,  What?  Wlmt?" 

Duff  moved  into  the  Hotel  Bel-Air  and 
began  a  period  of  dramatic  agonizing  about 
her  future.  Perelman  pressed  her  to  get  an 
immediate  divorce,  and  showered  her  with 
money  and  jewelry  and  Picasso  etchings. 
"Medavoy  found  out  about  [her  relation- 
ship with  Perelman]  after  she  left,  and  got 
furious.  And  she  by  then  wanted  to  get 
back  with  him,  and  she  was  devastated," 
says  a  confidante  from  that  time.  "She  said 
it  was  the  worst  mistake  she  ever  made  in 
her  life,  and  so  on,  and  it  all  just  escalated 
from  there.  But  that's  her  drama.  At  the 
time,  I  thought  it  was  all  real— the  kind  of 
tragedies  that  just  happen  to  people  who 
are  living  their  lives.  Later  I  came  to  under- 
stand that  Patricia  creates  these  things." 

Finally,  Perelman,  who  already  had  five 
children  from  two  marriages,  discerned  the 
true  price  of  the  prize  he  sought:  if  Patricia 
wanted  a  child,  she  would  have  one.  In 
fact,  he  told  her,  she  could  have  two.  To  en- 
hance his  bid,  he  packed  her  off  immedi- 
ately to  a  fertility  doctor  in  New  York,  and 
paid  for  her  treatment.  "It  was  kind  of  like 
a  takeover,"  says  someone  who  watched  the 
courtship  closely. 

Throughout  1994,  the  pull  between  these 
two  lives  seems  to  have  played  serious  hav- 
oc with  Duff's  equilibrium.  She  told  her 
friends  that  Perelman  was  explosive  and 
domineering,  that  she  was  afraid  of  him. 
When  Medavoy  declined  to  take  her  back, 
according  to  two  sources,  she  went  into 
their  old  house  and  defaced  close  to  a 
dozen  pictures  of  his  girlfriend,  Irena  Ward, 


i 


who  would  later  become  his  third  wife, 
drawing  horns  on  her  head  and  arro< 
through  her  breasts,  and  attaching  Post 
notes  bearing  angry  commentary.  Dij 
furiously  denies  this  story.  "I  have  nev 
marked  up  anyone's  property,  never  defao 
anyone's  property,  never  harmed  anyom 
property,"  she  says.  "I'd  love  to  have  son 
one  get  on  the  stand  and  say  that." 

"During  '94,  in  the  spring,  she  was 
tears  all  the  time  over  Medavoy,"  says  son 
one  who  knows  her  well.  "But  she  was  al 
trying  to  get  pregnant  with  Ronald. . . .  B 
at  the  same  time,  she  was  complaining  th 
Ronald  was  abusive.  That  he  had  the 
guards  who  watched  her  house  in  Califorr 
and  shadowed  her,  and  that  it  was  terril 
being  watched  all  the  time.  But  then, 
July,  she  was  really  happy  because  she  w 
pregnant.  So  now  this  would  make  her  ha 
py,  and  make  everything  O.K." 

Papers  filed  in  the  Medavoy  divon 
show  that  Duff  hedged  her  bets  financial 
for  as  long  as  she  could.  In  October  1993 
the  same  month  she  first  filed  for  divon 
from  Medavoy— Perelman  gave  her  a  cas 
gift  of  $200,000.  Medavoy,  knowing  not 
ing  about  this,  gave  her  $10,000  the  san 
month.  The  following  February,  the  pr 
ducer  gave  his  estranged  wife  $100,000,  ft 
lowed  by  $20,000  in  April  and  again 
May.  In  a  later  deposition,  Medavoy's  atto 
ney  asked  her  whether  she  had  mentione 
her  lover's  subsidy  when  she  asked  her  hu 
band  for  money.  "No,  I  did  not,"  she  e 
plained.  "I  did  not  want  to  be  put  in  tl 
position  of  having  to  use  the  $200,000  if 
really  didn't  have  to." 

Even  after  she  embarked  on  fertility  trea 
ments  with  Perelman,  she  filed  a  reque 
for  support  from  Medavoy  in  Los  Angelc 
Superior  Court,  asking  that  the  court  ord< 
him  to  pay  her  $37,000  a  month— plus  ta: 
She  was  unable  to  work,  she  noted  in  cou 
filings,  because  of  recurrences  of  her  chroi 
ic  fatigue. 

Much  later,  when  both  marriages  ha 
run  their  courses,  Warren  Beatty  arrange 
for  Medavoy  and  Perelman  to  get  togethe 
The  two  men  realized,  according  to  source 
close  to  both  of  them,  that  in  the  raw  per 
od  between  her  marriages  she  had  been  s 
multaneously  telling  each  man  how  badl 
the  other  treated  her— and  how  furiously  th 
other  was  pressing  her  to  commit  to  him. 

411  Ten  are  dumb,"  says  Ronald  Perelmar 
1V1  "Particularly  the  one  sitting  acros 
from  you."  , 

He  is  a  dense  bullet  of  a  man,  compact 
ly  contained  in  a  tightly  fitted  shirt.  As  h 
talks  in  his  plush  paneled  office,  he  con 
stantly  mouths  a  huge  cigar  or  squeezes 
cheap,  multicolored  Koosh  ball.  He  doe 
have,  as  people  say,  a  forceful  presence 
though  maybe  that's  just  a  function  of  a 

AUGUST     199 


e  stories  one  has  heard:  about  his  ruthless 
isiness  dealings  in  the  1980s,  when  his  ac- 
lisitions  of  Revlon,  the  Marvel  Entertain- 
ent  Group,  and  other  companies  made 
m  one  of  the  chief  leveraged-buyout  brig- 
ids  of  that  lawless  era.  Or  maybe  it's  the 
ay  that  employees  in  his  hushed  town- 
juse  headquarters,  an  environment  as 
tenuously  controlled  as  Biosphere  Two,  go 
ound  referring  to  him  by  the  godly  pro- 
>un.  As  in:  He's  back  from  lunch,  or  He's 
I  ady  for  you  now. 
Or  maybe  it's  just  that  he  has  so  much 
ioney.  Lately  the  stock  of  Revlon,  his  big- 
:st  holding,  has  declined,  and  Perelman 
as  been  trying  to  sell  it.  But  even  in  a  bad 
;ar,  Forbes  recently  pegged  his  fortune  at 
4.2  billion. 

And  he  is  not  one  of  those  men  on 
horn  billions  are  wasted.  Perelman  spends 
eely  on  a  lifestyle  that  includes  travel  by 
elicopter,  yacht,  and  private  jet,  and  houses 
i  Palm  Beach,  New  York  City,  and  East 
lampton.  His  57-acre  estate  there  on  Geor- 
ica  Pond,  "The  Creeks,"  is  the  scene  of 
wish  weekend  house  parties.  One  visitor 
jmembers  another  guest  telling  her,  in 
wed  tones,  that  he  had  called  to  the  front 
ate  to  ask  if  there  was  some  way  he  could 
aake  a  quick  trip  to  a  local  drugstore.  In- 
tantly,  someone  pulled  up  to  his  door  to 
ffer  him  the  keys  to  a  gleaming  Mercedes 
onvertible  with  less  than  100  miles  on  it. 
You  get  the  impression  the  place  is  full  of 
>ys  like  that,"  she  says. 

Surely  the  money  is  one  of  the  reasons 
)r  Perelman's  success  with  women;  since 
is  breakup  with  Duff  he  has  dated  TV  per- 
anality  Eleanor  Mondale  and,  more  recent- 
I  Ellen  Barkin,  whom  he  apparently  in- 
:nds  to  marry  once  she  has  completed  her 
ivorce  from  actor  Gabriel  Byrne.  He  can 
e  gracious,  even  charming,  when  he  wants 
)  be.  "We  never  should  have  gotten  here," 
e  says  of  the  custody  case  he  and  Duff  are 
'aging.  "It's  not  a  good  thing  for  anyone  in- 
olved.  Both  Patricia  and  I  look  lousy." 

Around  the  edges,  though,  you  can  make 
ut  the  annoyance  of  a  man  who,  when  he 
uys  a  thing,  expects  it  to  stay  bought.  He 
ronounces  his  ex-wife's  name  Pa-tree-sha.. 

rvrhen  Duff  finally  married  him,  a  few 
W  weeks  after  Caleigh  Sophia's  birth  in 
>ecember  1994,  Perelman  turned  out  not 
)  be  the  world's  best  husband  material, 
vlight  the  pre-nuptial  agreement,  which 
le  signed  between  the  birth  and  the  wed- 
ing,  have  served  as  her  first  clue?  It  con- 
lined  a  provision  that  neither  party  would 
make  disparaging  remarks  about  the  per- 
jnal,  private  or  family  life"  of  the  other 
arty,  "including  without  limitation  the  oth- 
r's  family,  companions,  dates,  acquain- 
inces,  or  future  spouses")  Once  they  mar- 
ed,  Duff  has  told  friends,  he  demanded 


to  know  her  whereabouts  all  the  time.  A 
friend  describes  her  cadging  cell  phones  so 
she  could  make  calls  he  wouldn't  be  able 
to  find  out  about,  and  others  remember 
her  sneaking  out  a  side  door  of  Barneys  to 
run  secret  errands— including  legal  consul- 
tations—while her  car  and  driver  idled  at 
another  door. 

"'Domineering'  is  too  small  a  word"  to 
describe  Perelman  as  a  husband,  says  some- 
one who  had  a  close-up  view  of  the  mar- 
riage. "He  thinks  if  you're  nice  80  percent 
of  the  time,  and  you're  only  berserk  20  per- 
cent of  the  time,  it's  O.K."  This  might  be 
dismissed  as  the  hyperbole  of  someone 
on  Duff's  side,  but  there  is  other  testimony 
about  Perelman's  rages.  Anne  Kiley,  who 
was  one  of  Duff's  attorneys  in  her  divorce 
from  Medavoy,  recalls  two  furious  phone 
calls  from  Perelman— who  at  that  time  was 
fuming  over  the  slowness  of  his  lover's  di- 
vorce. "I  would  pick  up  the  phone,  and  he 
would  be  screaming  about  something  go- 


"I  just  think 
Fm  up  against 

impossible 

circumstances, 

says  Duff, 

bursting  into 

precipitous  tears. 


T; 


ing  on  in  that  case,  and  while  he  was  yelling 
at  me  he  would  turn  from  the  phone  and 
scream  at  her.  Like  'Shut  up,  you  bitch.'  . . . 
During  the  second  call  he  insulted  her  and 
screamed  at  her  so  much  that  the  next 
day  I  called  his  attorney  and  said,  T  don't 
want  your  client  calling  me  ever  again.'" 

Perelman  adamantly  denies  screaming  at 
Kiley  or  at  Duff  during  these  conversations. 

"Ronald  is  a  total,  total  control  freak," 
says  someone  who  knows  him  through 
business.  "He's  quite  nuts,  in  his  own  way." 
Perelman  is  famously  hypervigilant  about 
protecting  his  family  and  his  business  inter- 
ests, employing  a  huge  security  force  that  in- 
cludes retired  New  York  City  police  officers 
and  a  former  deputy  director  of  the  F.B.I. 
He  requires  strict  confidentiality  agreements 
from  everyone  who  works  for  him. 

"He  lets  out  his  temper  in  huge,  fast, 
quick  spurts,"  says  someone  who  is  fond  of 
him.  "He'll  do  it  at  the  driver— 'Do  you 
know  how  to  fuckin'  drive  a  car?  Do  you 


fuckin'  know  where  you're  going?' "  Clearly, 
his  intimates  get  their  share  of  this  wrath: 
when  his  son  was  getting  married,  in  1996, 
and  the  bride  refused  to  sign  the  proposed 
pre-nup,  Perelman  boycotted  the  wedding. 

Naturally,  Perelman's  advocates  also  de- 
scribe the  Duff-Perelman  marriage  as  a  liv- 
ing hell— for  him.  Where  she  saw  a  husband 
who  shadowed  and  controlled  and  bullied 
his  wife,  he  saw  a  wife  who  lied  constantly, 
treated  his  other  children  badly,  and  ran 
around  town  peddling  slander  about  him.  It 
isn't  at  all  clear  who  was  controlling  whom. 
Someone  who  knew  the  couple  well  believes 
that  Duff  played  "a  cat-and-mouse  game," 
meeting  Perelman's  efforts  at  control  with  a 
constant  attempt  to  elude  him  and  keep  him 
off-balance.  Which  only  made  him  more 
controlling.  In  its  way,  it  was  a  perfect  rela- 
tionship: just  as  paranoids  sometimes  have 
real  enemies,  each  had  found  a  mate  who 
fulfilled  his  or  her  darkest  expectations  about 
the  possibilities  of  love. 

At  any  rate,  the  union  was  brief.  "Once 
you  had  lunch  with  her,  you  always  said  to 
yourself,  Boy,  that  is  measured  in  days  or 
weeks,  that  marriage,"  says  an  acquain- 
tance. Perelman  dumped  Duff  in  a  legen- 
dary blowup  in  Chicago,  during  the  1996 
Democratic  convention,  because  he  was  fu- 
rious with  her  for  attending,  the  night  be- 
fore, a  party  he  had  asked  her  not  to  go  to. 
In  the  accounts  of  her  friends,  it  was  the 
classic  tantrum  of  a  totally  despotic  man 
who  was  looking  for  an  excuse  to  punish 
his  wife.  In  the  accounts  of  his  camp,  her 
offense  lay  not  in  going  to  the  party  but  in 
lying  about  it;  this  one,  apparently  harm- 
less, transgression  was  the  straw  that  broke 
the  camel's  back. 

She  told  friends  she  was  astonished.  De- 
spite the  wildly  stormy  nature  of  their  mar- 
riage, she  thought  things  were  settling  down; 
in  fact,  she'd  been  trying  to  get  pregnant 
again  with  the  promised  second  child.  They 
attempted,  several  times,  to  reconcile,  but 
every  try  ended  in  a  fight.  The  marriage 
had  lasted  for  about  20  months. 

Under  the  terms  of  their  pre-nuptial 
agreement,  Duff  made  out  pretty  well: 
she  received  $5  million  in  cash,  two  houses 
in  Connecticut  now  worth  about  $6  mil- 
lion, and  roughly  $1.2  million  a  year  in 
maintenance,  which  will  continue  until 
Caleigh's  16th  birthday,  unless  Duff  remar- 
ries before  then.  In  addition,  she  had  accu- 
mulated substantial  assets  through  gifts  and 
investments  during  the  courtship  and  mar- 
riage. It  wasn't  the  $80  million  that  Claudia 
Cohen  got  from  him,  but  that  marriage  had 
lasted  almost  nine  years.  (His  first  wife. 
Faith  Golding,  had  received  only  $8  mil- 
lion—but that  was  in  1983,  and  she  had  en- 
tered the  marriage  with  a  huge  fortune  of 
her  own.)  Altogether,  according  to  a  1997 


UGUST     1999 


VANITY     FAIR 


Palri<    i  Dull 


i  filed  with  the  court,  Duff  left 

hei  n  iagc  with  assets  of  close  to  $30 
aillion  including  about  $3  million  she  had 
woo  hi  Medavoy,  jewelry  worth  $4.5  mil- 
lion, and  art  and  antiques  valued  at  $7.5 
million.  1  asi  September  they  were  officially 
divorced,  setting  aside  the  unresolved  issues 
of  custody,  visitation,  and  child  support  to 
be  decided  later. 

The  custody  case  has  already  dragged 
on  so  long,  and  spun  off  so  many  small 
tornadoes  oi'  suhlitigation.  that  it's  hard  to 
make  the  simplest  generalizations  about 
who's  trying  to  do  what  to  whom.  Perel- 
man  wanted  the  case  tried  in  closed  court, 
as  is  common  in  celebrity  custody  cases  in 
New  York.  Duff,  however,  went  to  the  state 
court  of  appeals  to  open  the  courtroom, 
arguing  that  it  was  the  only  way  to  prevent 
Perelman's  money  and  power  from  corrupt- 
ing the  process.  The  forensic  psychiatrist 
in  the  case  and  Caleigh's  court-appointed 
guardian  filed  in  vehement  opposition,  ar- 
guing, in  the  guardian's  words,  that  Caleigh 
would  be  "traumatized  by  the  repercus- 
sions of  [her]  renown."  The  move  was  also 
opposed  by  Cohen,  who  conducted  her 
own  divorce  from  Perelman  in  secrecy,  and 
who  now  fears  that  the  terms  of  that  di- 
vorce, and  the  details  of  her  own  nine-year- 
old  daughter's  life,  will  be  dragged  into  the 
light  of  day.  "None  of  it,"  says  someone  in 
Perelman's  camp,  "is  worth  putting  your 
kid  on  page  one  of  the  New  York  Post. " 

But  Duff  won  on  this  issue.  This  is  why 
all  of  New  York  now  knows  that  Caleigh 
Perelman's  parents  can't  agree  on  what  age 
is  appropriate  for  riding  lessons  (she  says 
four;  he  says  never);  that  Duff  was  sup- 
posedly cruel  to  Caleigh's  older  half-sister 
Samantha;  that  a  court  psychiatrist  tagged 
Duff  as  a  histrionic,  paranoid  narcissist  and 
said  Perelman  should  have  long-term  thera- 
py to  control  his  fits  of  rage. 

Along  the  way,  there  have  been  bitter 
battles  over  such  issues  as  schooling  and  re- 
ligious holidays.  Duff  converted  to  Judaism 
as  a  condition  of  her  marriage  to  Perelman, 
a  devout  Jew  who  keeps  kosher  even  at  Le 
Cirque  2000  and  talks  to  his  rabbi  daily.  In 
court,  Perelman  has  charged  that  Duff  isn't 
sufficiently  observant— she  held  an  Easter- 
egg  hunt  last  year,  for  example— and  has 
won  the  right  to  supervise  his  daughter  on 
most  of  the  Jewish  holidays.  Security  has 
been  another  major  point  of  conflict.  Al- 
though experts  for  both  sides  testified  that 
Caleigh  was  at  relatively  low  risk  for  kid- 
napping, Perelman  successfully  argued  for 
round-the-clock  security,  and  Duff  now 
labors  under  a  strict  requirement  that  em- 
ployees of  a  $l,000-a-day  security  service- 
hired  by  her  but  vetted  and  paid  by  him— 

I      VANITY     FAIR 


accompany  net  and  the  child  everywhere, 
screen  all  then  visitors  and  repaii men,  and 
live  in  their  home  She  is  appealing  this  rul- 
ing, as  well  as  numerous  others.  In  turn, 
Perelman  has  sued  her  more  than  once  for 
violating  the  confidentiality  provision  of  the 
pre-nuptial  agreement,  which  contained  a 
punitive  clause  specifying  that  he  can  with- 
hold $500,000  in  support  every  time  she  is 
in  breach.  He  appears  close  to  winning  a 
fine  against  her  on  this  front. 

Although  Perelman  is  technically  the 
plaintiff  in  the  custody  case,  it  was 
Duff  who  first  requested  full  custody— al- 
lowing Perelman  to  argue  that  he  had  no 
choice  but  to  sue  for  full  custody  himself, 
since  New  York  law  leans  against  the  impo- 
sition of  joint  custody  in  any  case  where 
the  parents  have  not  voluntarily  agreed  on 
it.  In  fact,  what  he  now  really  wants  is  an 
arrangement  in  which  physical  custody  is 
shared,  but  he  will  control  such  matters  as 
education,  medical  care,  and  religious  train- 
ing; this  is  what  the  forensic  psychiatrist 
recommended.  "For  me,  it's  about  protect- 
ing my  child,"  he  says.  "As  the  process  has 
shown,  Patricia  cares  about,  and  thinks 
about.  Patricia." 

What  Duff  would  settle  for  is  harder  to 
say.  "She  wants  to  demolish  him,  and  she's 
not  going  to  be  able  to  do  that,"  says  one 
of  her  legion  of  former  attorneys.  Duff 
maintains  that  Perelman's  chief  interest  in 
the  child  is  as  a  means  to  punish  the  moth- 
er. Claudia  Cohen,  she  argues,  received 
similar  treatment  during  her  divorce  from 
Perelman.  "I  lived  through  that  litigation 
with  Perelman,"  Duff  said  in  an  affidavit. 
"I  saw  the  way  he  treated  Cohen  during  the 
litigation:  often  purposely  leaving  her  on 
hold  for  many,  many  minutes  when  she 
called  to  speak  to  Samantha,  even  though 
Samantha  was  right  there  and  available; 
forcing  her  to  send  Samantha  to  his  home 
for  visitation  even  though  he  was  out  of 
town  and  she  would  be  left  in  the  care  of 
others  . . .  withholding  money  from  Cohen 
just  to  pressure  her  and  in  numerous  other 
ways  torturing  her  and  treating  her  puni- 
tively."  In  court  papers  that  were  leaked  to 
the  Daily  News  in  1996,  Cohen  charged 
that  Perelman  tried  to  "exert  control  over 
me  and  my  personal  life,"  threatening  to 
disinherit  Samantha  if  Cohen  dated  New 
York  senator  Alfonse  D'Amato. 

But  these  days  Cohen  is  firmly  on  Perel- 
man's side,  and  she  refused  to  comment 
for  this  article.  Both  Duff  and  Perelman 
have  friends  who  attest  to  their  devotion  as 
parents. 

Just  to  complicate  matters,  after  the 
custody  trial  was  opened  to  the  public  last 
winter,  in  the  middle  of  Perelman's  presen- 
tation of  his  case.  Justice  Bransten,  who 
was  being  transferred  to  a  different  divi- 


te 

pi 


lion  of  the  court,  abruptly  halted  the  pn 
ceedings  and  assigned  the  question  < 
child  support  alone  to  another  judge;  th; 
proceeding,  which  began  in  the  winl 
was  in  turn  stopped  when  two  of  Duff 
attorneys  were  disqualified,  on  the  groun 
that  they  had  represented  Cohen  in  her  d 
vorce  from  Perelman.  Duff  has  appealei 
the  disqualification,  throwing  the  chik 
support  hearing  into  hiatus*  And  now  Ju 
tice  Bransten  has  temporarily  returne 
from  her  new  assignment,  ready  to  resum 
the  custody  trial  later  this  summer 

This  stop-and-go  process.  Duff  argue 
has  effectively  silenced  her,  while  the  judg 
makes  incremental  decisions  on  thin; 
such  as  holiday  visitation  without  the  bei 
efit  of  any  evidence  from  Duff's  side.  O 
as  she  puts  it,  "I  waited  Gandhi-like  fc 
two  years  of  rulings  by  the  judge,  until' 
could  put  on  my  case.  And  then  just  b( 
fore  it  was  supposed  to  start  ...  the  judg 
closes  it  down."  There  has  been,  sh 
charges,  "an  appalling  lack  of  due  proces 
that  has  been  part  and  parcel  of  this  cas 
from  day  one." 

And  then  there's  the  money.  Perelman' 
camp  claims  that  Duff  is  dragging  th 
case  out  in  order  to  make,  in  child  sui 
port,  the  spectacular  score  that  the  pre 
nuptial  agreement  prevented  her  from  get 
ting  in  alimony.  "The  only  way  to  increase 
your  standard  of  living,  if  you're  her,  i 
child  support."  says  a  Perelman  ally.  "An( 
there  isn't  a  child  in  the  world  you  cai 
spend  that  amount  of  money  on,  unles 
you're  planning  to  hang  Matisses  on  th 
wall  of  the  nursery." 

"This  isn't  about  money,"  Duff  says.  " 
don't  want  anything  for  myself."  For  Perel 
man's  side  to  portray  her  as  a  gold  digge 
is,  she  says,  "a  cruel  joke." 

"It's  only  about  the  kid,  for  her,"  affirm 
Richard  Emery,  a  friend  who  has  also  act 
ed  as  her  attorney.  "She  has  a  completely 
pure-hearted  belief  that  the  child's  onh, 
chance  at  a  life  with  a  semblance  of  nor 
malcy  is  to  be  with  her." 

Yet  Duff's  side  has  argued  that  it's  im 
portant  for  Caleigh  to  live  at  least  as  well  a< 
her  half-sister  Samantha— whose  mother  ha; 
a  Park  Avenue  apartment  that  was  worth  al 
most  $8  million  in  1994,  and  an  8.5-acre 
East  Hampton  estate  that  cost  more  thar 
$4  million  a  decade  ago— and,  to  the  extern 
possible,  to  see  her  mother  and  father  as  fi 
nancial  equals.  "It's  about  getting  what 
Claudia  got— that's  really  what  she  has  in 
mind,"  says  someone  who  has  discussed  the 
issue  with  Duff. 

"It's  clear  [in  New  York  State  support 
guidelines]  that  there  should  be  no  great 
disparity  between  the  [parents']  homes," 
Duff  says.  "There's  no  way  I  can  ever 
equalize  it.  But  what  I  don't  want  it  to  be  is 

AUGUST      199 


difYerent  that  somehow  or  another  she 
lid  be,  in  effect,  seduced  away  from  me. 
those  times  in  her  life,  particularly  as 
i  reaches  puberty,  that  she  sees  the  differ- 
;e.  She  sees  it  now!  She'll  say,  'Mommy, 
l  we  get  a  screening  room  in  Connecti- 
?'  Well,  I  used  to  have  screening  rooms 
my  old  life.  But  that's  not  something 
it's  an  option  now.  She's  well  aware  that 
r  father  has  a  yacht.  She's  well  aware 
it  in  her  other  house,  with  her  father, 
\ res  huge  playrooms." 
She  maintains  that  Perelman  should  be 
ponsible  for  the  purchase  of  a  fine  New 
rk  town  house— claiming  that  the  court- 
posed  security  regime  means  that  she 
eds  a  bigger  house  than  she  can  afford 
rself.  "No  co-op  board  will  accept 
em,"  wrote  Duff's  legal  team  in  one 
ng.  "Only  the  most  unaffordable 
vnhouses  can  accommodate  their 
ace/security  needs."  (If  necessary, 
jff  notes,   Perelman   could   pur- 
ase  the  house  himself  and  allow 
r  to  live  there  only  until  Caleigh 
aches  18.) 

And  in  a  filing  last  summer,  Duff 
dicated  that  she  and  Caleigh  might 
|  expected  to  have  monthly  ex- 
:nses— not  including  the  Manhat- 
n  housing  costs— in  the  neighbor- 
ed of  $267,000,  including  $15,000 
r  vacations  (each  month),  $20,600 
r  household  help  (which  would, 
esumably,  cover  the  chef  that  her 
gal  team  claims  is  in  order  for 
aleigh's  care  and  feeding),  $1,750 
beauty-parlor  and  salon  treat- 
ents,  $15,000  in  clothing  for  her- 
lf,  and  $3,000  in  clothing  for 
ileigh.  Pending  resolution  of  the 
old-support  issue,  Duff  asked  for 
terim  support  of  $60,000  a 
onth,  to  include  rent.  At  present, 
e  is  receiving  $12,000  in  interim 
pport,  with  Perelman  also  paying 
i  fees  for  nannies,  schools,  and 
mps. 

Until  all  this  is  settled,  Duff  has  cast  her- 
If  and  Caleigh  into  the  limbo  of  a  $30,000- 
nonth  suite  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria— and 
trying  to  move  up  to  a  bigger  suite  at 
0,000  a  month. 

"She  wants  the  money,"  says  a  woman 
10  knows  her.  "When  the  separation  first 
irted,  I  said,  'God,  Patricia,  why  don't 
u  just  get  a  divorce  and  get  a  job  and 
t  on  with  your  life?'  She  looked  at  me  as 
I  was  talking  a  foreign  language,  and 
id  but  then  her  daughter  wouldn't  live  in 
:  same  way  as  his  other  children.  And  I 
id,  'So  what?'  Her  daughter  would  still 
fine.  And  she  looked  as  if  I  was  talk- 
|  a  different  foreign  language.  To  her,  it's 
:onceivable  that  her  daughter  won't  be 
well  off  as  his  other  children." 


In  the  meantime,  Duff  has  been  plow- 
ing through  the  cream  of  the  New  York 
matrimonial  bar  at  the  average  rate  of 
one  law  firm  every  two  months  since  her 
divorce  from  Perelman  began;  Perelman's 
lawyer  says  she  has  used  16  firms  in  all. 
"The  Duff  case  could  also  be  called  the 
Lawyers'  Full  Employment  Act,"  says 
Stanford  Lotwin,  who  was  fifth  in  line. 
Duff  insists  that  some  of  these  lawyers 
have  worked  in  teams,  so  the  numbers 
look  artificially  high.  "I  don't  think  all  the 
attorneys  I've  had  have  necessarily  always 
been  on  my  side,"  she  adds  darkly.  "She's 
sure  that  they've  all  been  bought  off  by 
Ronald,"  says  someone  who  knows  her 
well.  "That  they're  all  giving  her  bad  ad- 
vice, and  fooling  her,  and  withholding  in- 
formation, because  Ronald  has  gotten  to 


SCARLET  WOMAN 

Duff,  in  her  political-consultant/aspiring- 
actress  days,  embodies  the  spirit  of 
"Summer  Pleasures"  for  The  Washingtonian 
magazine,  1983. 


them She  wants  them  on  24-hour  call, 

and  then  she   disagrees  with  everything 

they  tell  her So  she  calls  friends  and 

asks  for  recommendations  because  it's  an 
emergency,  and  no  one  is  helping  her,  and 
you  wouldn't  believe  what's  happening  to 
her.  And  then  the  cycle  starts  again,  with 
the  next  one." 

But  it  isn't  true  that  she  has  fired  them 
all;  at  least  four  of  them  have  fired  her,  and 
a  fifth  has  petitioned  to  leave  the  case. 
Lotwin  was  one  of  those  who  quit.  Al- 
though he  has  seen  clients  through  some 


tempestuous  divorces,  including  Donald 
Trump  in  both  his  splits  and  Claudia  Cohen 
in  Perelman's  previous  divorce,  he  couldn't 
hack  this  one.  "I  simply  found  that  it  was 
causing  too  much  stress  on  myself  and 
members  of  my  staff,"  he  says.  "When 
someone  has  gone  through  many  lawyers, 
they  haven't  just  had  a  lot  of  bad  lawyers. 
They're  a  difficult  client." 

Another  of  Duff's  former  attorneys  com- 
plained of  "the  second-guessing  and  the 
criticism  and  the  hysteria. . . .  She's  just  too 
suspicious,  and  too  difficult  to  handle." 

Then  there's  the  matter  of  payment.  At 
least  six  firms,  including  her  current  one, 
claim  to  have  been  stiffed  by  Duff.  In  Feb- 
ruary, her  former  attorney  Herman  Tarnow 
sued  her  for  $70,434.85.  The  following 
month,  William  Beslow— who  represented 
her  for  about  three  months  begin- 
ning last  November— sued  her  for 
unpaid  fees  of  $114,009.50.  Last 
November,  Norman  Sheresky— 
one  of  the  lawyers  who  quit  the 
case— took  her  to  arbitration  over 
money  she  owed  him.  And  now  one 
of  her  current  firms,  Cohen,  Hen- 
nessey &  Bienstock,  has  asked  to 
withdraw  from  the  case  unless 
Duff  will  agree  to  a  schedule  of 
payments  and  stick  to  it.  Another 
lawyer  has  written  off  the  fees  she 
owes  as  a  lost  cause,  and  still  an- 
other is  in  the  threatening-letter 
stage  of  trying  to  recover  some 
money. 

As  of  late  May,  two  more  parties 
had  come  after  Duff  for  funds:  a 
court  reporter  who  has  not  been 
paid  by  Duff's  side  for  transcripts  of 
the  proceedings,  and  Jo  Ann  Doug- 
las, the  court-appointed  guardian 
who  represents  Caleigh,  who  wants 
to  recover  $20,000,  Duff's  unpaid 
share  of  her  fee.  This  last  one,  de- 
spite the  relatively  small  sum  in- 
volved, is  really  the  most  astonish- 
ing: it  would  seem  self-defeating  in 
the  extreme  for  Duff  to  be  on  the  bad  side 
of  a  woman  whose  recommendations  will 
carry  enormous  weight  in  court. 

But  in  Duff's  view  all  these  creditors  seem 
to  be  part  of  Perelman's  vendetta  against  her. 
"All  these  decisions  about  what's  going  to 
happen  to  my  daughter  aren't  going  to  be 
based  on  her  interest.  It's  going  to  be  based 
on  whether  I  can  stay  focused  on  the  litiga- 
tion when  there's  other  litigation  coming  from 
three  or  four  other  parties.  And  I  frankly 
don't  think  it's  just  a  coincidence." 

Duff  says  this  in  the  same  way  she  says 
everything  about  her  case— fast,  but  in  a 
calm,  normal  voice.  Watching  her  pretty 
face  at  a  time  like  this,  you  have  the  feeling 
of  momentary  dislocation  that  is  described 


I  G  U  S  T     19  9  9 


VANITY     FAIR 


Dull 


pe  .ho've  been  through  earthquakes, 
i  qn         (lifting  in  your  sense  of  reality 

>ple  who  have  talked  with 
..in  the  ease,  she  believes  that  I'eiel- 
man  is  literally  trying  to  drive  her  crazy, 
hting"  her  with  an  elaborate  series  of 
small,  malicious  acts  of  vandalism  and 
:  formed  by  her  quiekly  shifting  cast 
of  household  help.  When  anything  goes 
wrong  the  mail  is  late,  or  a  storm  seems  to 
damage  more  of  her  trees  than  her  neigh- 
bor's—she sees  his  machinations  at  work. 

Over  the  past  three  years,  she  has  called 
police  in  Connecticut  and  New  York  City 
at  least  seven  times  to  report  episodes  of 
mischief  for  which  she  believes  he's  respon- 
sible. In  June  1997,  for  example,  she  called 
the  Fairfield  police  to  report  a  raft  of  thefts 
and  vandalism,  including  tampering  with 
her  telephone.  "Duff  located  marks  on  her 
office  door  which  is  always  locked  indicat- 
ing it  had  been  removed  from  the  hinges," 
wrote  the  responding  officer.  "The  office 
had  cassette  tapes  of  conversations  with  her 
husband  Perelman.  Duff's  voice  is  still  on 
cassette,  Perelman's  voice  was  erased." 

She  phoned  the  police  again  five  months 
later  with  a  complete  list  of  the  items  she  said 
had  been  stolen  from  her.  It  included  four 
Hermes  belts,  an  Hermes  crocodile  hand- 
bag that  had  been  whisked  from  behind  an- 
other locked  door,  "24  Baccarat  highball 
glasses  valued  at  $3,120,"  six  Hermes  scarves, 
and  "three  Pratesi  sheet  sets,  value  $7,500." 

When  another  officer  followed  up  two 
months  later,  he  wrote,  "Duff  has  no  sus- 
pects but  believes  any  person  employed  by 
Perelman  after  their  separation  could  have 
been  instructed  to  remove  the  items  from 
the  house." 

In  September  of  last  year  she  sum- 
moned the  police  again  at  almost  10  p.m., 
reporting  the  theft  since  May  of  so  much 
property  that  it  took  the  responding  officer 
four  pages  to  enumerate  it  all:  25  shirts  val- 
ued at  $10,000,  15  Ralph  Lauren  leather 
belts,  and  20  pairs  of  black  pants,  valued 
at  $24,000.  A  cell  phone,  a  photo  album,  a 
rug,  a  cable  remote,  film  containing  pic- 
tures of  Duff,  and  Duff's  notes  document- 
ing all  the  incidents  she  was  reporting  to 
police.  This  time,  Duff  named  a  specific 
employee  as  the  culprit.  "Miss  Duff  stated 


the  suspect  is  removing  the  items  to  cause 
an  inconvenience  to  her,  a  divorce  with  hci 
husband  is  pending  and  all  security  person- 
nel are  employed  by  him." 

Two  weeks  later.  Duff  called  police  again 
to  report  that  two  Plexiglas  window  guards 
in  Caleigh's  room  had  been  tampered  with. 
"Mrs.  Duff  feels  that  her  ex-husband  ...  is 
somehow  responsible." 

Duff  is  so  persuaded,  by  now,  of  Perel- 
man's omnipotence  that  she  often  makes 
phone  calls  from  the  homes  or  offices  of 
friends.  She  has  been  known  to  ask  people 
to  use  pseudonyms  when  they  call  her, 
and  she  has  put  combination  locks  on  the 
doors  of  her  bedroom  and  bathroom  at  the 
Waldorf-Astoria.  At  some  point,  she  began 
recording  the  regular  phone  calls  she  makes 
to  Caleigh  when  the  girl  is  visiting  her  father; 
Perelman  got  a  court  order  to  make  her  stop. 

U  1 1his  is  actually  a  really  easy  case,"  says 

JL  Perelman's  lead  lawyer,  Adria  Hillman. 
"There  have  been  half  a  dozen  serious  set- 
tlement negotiations.  Every  time  she  gets 
close,  she  fires  her  lawyers  or  finds  some 
other  excuse."  To  be  sure,  this  is  what 
Perelman's  lawyer  would  say— and  pretty  much 
the  same  thing  Duff  has  said  about  him. 
"If  I  could  extricate  myself  from  this,"  she 
says,  "I  would,  in  a  minute." 

But  some  of  her  former  attorneys  concur 
that  it  is  Duff,  more  than  Perelman,  who 
has  kept  the  fight  alive.  "She  always  found 
an  excuse  not  to  resolve  it,"  agrees  one  of 
her  former  attorneys.  "When  it  comes  down 
to  it,  she'll  find  an  excuse  that's  meaning- 
less . . .  that's  her  more  than  him." 

"I  think  he  would  like  to  have  settled  it," 
says  Lotwin. 

Had  they  settled  the  custody  question  ear- 
ly, when  it  was  framed  more  as  a  matter  of 
working  out  a  visitation  schedule,  the  court's 
presumption  would  have  been  mostly  in  the 
mother's  favor.  "As  time  has  gone  by,  she 
loses  ground,"  argues  one  of  her  former  at- 
torneys. "He  didn't  want  as  much  decision- 
making power"  in  the  beginning.  But  in  re- 
fusing to  settle,  she  opened  the  way  for  the 
appointment  of  the  forensic  psychiatrist, 
whose  conclusions  about  Duff  were  devas- 
tating. This  attorney  also  believes  she  has 
alienated  Caleigh's  court-appointed  guardian. 
And  Justice  Bransten  may  well  be  tired  of 
hearing  herself  described  as  Perelman's  pawn. 
He,  meanwhile,  has  moved  to  press  every 


advantage.  "The  terms  you  could  have  g 
ten  a  year  ago,  you  couldn't  get  today, 
the  settlement,"  says  the  attorney,  addi: 
of  Perelman,  "You're  talking  about  iV 
lough.  It's  not  like  a  normal  person ." 


■'„& 

? 


Could  Duff  lose  custody  completely  if  s!| 
and  Perelman  force  the  trial  all  the  w 
to  a  conclusion?  "It  could  happen. '  sa 
this  attorney.  "At  the  beginning  of  the  caj 
I  would  have  thought  that  was  impossib! 
But  now  it's  certainly  a  possibility" 

The  custody  trial  is  scheduled  to  ste 
again  in  early  August.  In  the  meantime,  Se 
ator  Torricelli  continues  to  play  the  knigl 
errant,  scaring  up  lawyers  for  Duff  and  s 
ting  in  on  an  occasional  conference  abo 
strategy.  They  have  been  seeing  each  oth 
seriously  since  spring  of  last  year,  wh 
Democratic  fund-raiser  Beth  Dozoretz  br 
kered  a  date  between  them.  According  to 
friend,  he's  hoping  desperately  that  Duff  w 
see  the  light  and  settle  the  case,  or  that 
judge  will  do  more  to  force  a  settlement. 

But  apparently  the  impulse  to  ride 
Duff's  rescue  is  one  that  few  men  can  i 
sist.  At  a  birthday  party  he  threw  for  h 
this  year,  Torricelli  made  a  toast  that  elab 
rately  compared  Duff,  in  the  wake  of  h 
divorce  from  Perelman,  to  the  survivors 
the  Titanic:  "On  April  12th,  the  Titanic  e 
tered  the  Atlantic  and  Patricia  entered  tl 
world.  And  at  some  point  in  their  voyage 
the  Titanic  sank,  and  its  survivors  swam 
a  ship  that  was  simply  passing  in  the  nigl 
unaware,"  he  told  30  guests  at  Fresco, 
described  this  toast  to  me  proudly  in  an 
terview  after  the  fact.  "I  was  making  th 
point  that  I  was  that  ship,  and  the  survive 
swam  aboard,"  he  said.  "I  was  comparin 
myself  with  the  Carpathia. " 

But  if  the  past  is  any  measure,  he'd  d 
well  to  watch  for  icebergs  himself.  For  it 
striking,  in  the  end,  how  much  at  horn 
Duff  seems  in  the  midst  of  her  distres: 
She  is  undoubtedly,  sincerely  miserabl< 
but  she  is  at  home. 

More  than  once,  during  our  interview; 
Duff  burst  into  precipitous  tears.  "I  just  thin 
I'm  up  against  impossible  circumstances, 
she  said  during  one  such  outburst.  "Th 
longer  I'm  in  this,  the  more  I  see  it.  I  feel  a 
though  I'm  completely  overwhelmed  b 
forces  that  are  just  so  far  beyond  the  norm. 

When  the  tears  clear,  she  looks  as  radiant  a 
ever,  like  a  garden  refreshed  by  spring  rain.  [ 


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VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199' 


i    "OL'  BOYS"  DOUBLE  STANDARD...  FOR  FAIR-MINDED  PEOPLE  IT'S  A 

BITTER  PILL. 


MANY  HEALTH  INSURANCE  PLANS  THAT  COVER  VIAGRA  DO  NOT  COVER  BIRTH  CONTROL.  THIS  IS  A  BITTER  PILL  FOR  FAIR-MINDED  PEOPLE  TO 
SWALLOW.  RESPONSIBLE  WOMEN  RECOGNIZE  THAT  DECIDING  WHETHER  AND  WHEN  TO  HAVE  A  CHILD  IS  THE  MOST  PERSONAL  DECISION 
THEY'LL  EVER  MAKE  AND  IS  TOO  IMPORTANT  TO  BE  LEFT  TO  CHANCE.  YET,  THEY  ARE  FORCED  TO  BEAR  AN  UNFAIR  FINANCIAL  BURDEN.  IT'S 
TIME  FOR  THE  VOICE  OF  REASON  TO  BE  HEARD  IN  THE  HALLS  OF  CONGRESS.  TELL  YOUR  REPRESENTATIVE  THAT  INSURANCE  COMPANIES  MUST 
COVER  PRESCRIPTION  BIRTH  CONTROL  METHODS-BECAUSE  IT'S  RIGHT,  AND  IT'S  FAIR. 


ria  Feldt,  President, 
'tanned  Parenthood 
Federation  of  America 


Planned  Parenthood 
Responsible  Choices 


rlanelarium 


Vlichacl  I .ul in  tells  Leos,  Laugh  and  the  world  laughs  with  you 


Si 


JULY    Zi      AUG.     22 


: 

v.'  :  reeling  preoccupied  with  youi  professional  lite  now,  and  that's  be- 
iturn  is  culminating  in  your  solar  chart.  That  may  not  be  a  bad 
Hung,  Ibi  work  lias  been  just  what  you've  needed  to  keep  your  mind  oil' a 
personal  wound  thai  is  taking  longer  lo  heal  than  you'd  care  to  admit. 
Since  the  only  way  to  cure  it  is  to  address  it,  however,  you  need  to  take 
time  out  from  your  worldly  pursuits  to  deal  with  the  personal  issues 
which  have  taken  a  toll  on  you  and  your  family  for  several  months.  And 
if  you  cry  now  and  then,  do  you  think  anyone  cares? 


VIRGO 


i*r 


AUG.     2  3  -  S  E  PT.     22 


With  your  solar  4th  and  6th  houses  so  active,  you've  got  your  hands  full 
just  slaying  healthy  enough  to  be  productive  on  the  job.  As  if  that  weren't 
enough,  you  can't  seem  to  get  away  from  neighbors  and  relatives  who  can 
be  terribly  irritating,  if  not  downright  destructive.  Getting  out  of  the  city 
and  collapsing  into  the  comforting  embrace  of  friends  who  can  ply  you 
with  good  food  and  drink  is  certainly  a  great  way  to  spend  the  summer, 
liven  a  day-trip  can  do  wonders  for  your  pressured  psyche.  In  any  arena, 
quickies  can  be  fun. 


LIBRA 


SEPT.     23-OCT.     23 


A  Texas  billionaire,  when  asked  what  his  favorite  beer  was,  reportedly 
replied,  "That's  easy.  A  free  one."  While  that  may  be  one  sure  way  to  re- 
tain your  billions,  it's  not  a  point  of  view  that  suits  everybody.  As  Mars 
transits  your  2nd  house  for  most  of  the  summer,  you'll  have  to  adopt  a 
different  philosophy.  The  way  things  stand,  if  you  want  to  make  money 
you're  going  to  have  to  start  by  spending  a  pile.  But  don't  disregard  the  fi- 
nancial nervousness  you've  been  experiencing.  You  know  how  dangerous 
it  can  be  to  be  rushed  into  counting  those  stupid  chickens. 


TTtV» 


SCORPIO      \1W     OCT.   24-NOV.   21 

At  last!  Having  weathered  a  perfectly  wretched  retrograde  transit  of  Mars 
through  your  solar  12th  house,  you  are  coming  out  of  your  cave,  scarred 
perhaps  but  renewed  and  ready  to  resume  your  seduction  of  everybody 
who  has  more  money  than  you  do.  In  fact,  by  the  time  Chiron  leaves 
your  sign  in  late  September,  your  wounds,  emotional  and  physical  alike, 
should  be  healing  nicely.  The  Mars-Saturn  opposition  is  not  over  yet, 
however,  so  although  it  may  be  really  hard  to  control  yourself,  please 
keep  this  advice  in  mind:  No  matter  how  hungry  you  are,  don't  grab. 


AQUARIUS  ^V*V  JAN.  20- FEB.  18 
Will  you  ever  get  out  from  under  those  infernal  political  games?  Much  as 
you  would  like  to.  you  probably  won't  be  able  to  in  the  near  future,  as 
long  as  your  3rd-house  ruler  is  crossing  your  solar  midheaven.  It's  hard  to 
believe,  but  some  jerks  are  foolish  enough  lo  think  they  can  boss  and  bul- 
ly other  people  around,  control  and  intimidate  them,  attempt  to  make 
them  conform  to  a  rigid  set  of  rules,  and  get  this  at  the  same  time 
make  them  feel  that  it's  all  lor  their  own  good!  Foiling  the  plans  of  such 
tyrants  is  one  reason  Aquarians  were  put  on  the  earth 


X 


PISCES     j\    FEB.    19-  MARC  H    20 

You  may  not  be  totally  over  your  latest  funk,  but  at  least  you're  not  just 
sitting  on  the  couch  in  front  of  the  tube  watching  the  ice  melt  at  the  bot- 
tom of  your  glass.  And  you  certainly  don't  have  to  stew  in  your  own  juice 
now  that  your  solar  9th  house  is  getting  a  jolt  of  juice  from  Mars.  You 
should  be  out  there  traveling,  socializing,  performing,  partying,  and  stim- 
ulating your  brain  with  wholesome,  cultural  thoughts  and  high-minded 
exercises.  And,  if  you  must,  you  can  also  add  a  measure  of  your  usual 
secret  monkey  business  on  the  side. 


ARIES  f       M  ARC  H    21  -  A  P  R  I  L    I  9 

As  your  ruling  planet  enters  your  solar  8th  house  and  Chiron  prepares  to 
leave  it,  you  really  ought  to  apply  your  considerable  talents  to  the  process 
of  rebirth  in  the  area  of  your  sexuality.  That  shouldn't  be  too  difficult. 
Even  those  who  find  you  pushy,  obnoxious,  and  almost  impossible  to  deal 
with  will  have  to  concede  that  you've  been  able  to  accomplish  wonders 
over  the  last  six  months.  Whether  you  were  caught  up  in  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  a  nearly  shattered  ego  or  busy  starting  a  new  job,  you  managed  to 
be  fabulous,  if  you  have  to  say  so  yourself.  And  you  may  have  to. 


TAURUS      1/   APRIL20-MAY20 

Now  that  you  are  getting  your  strength  back  and  no  longer  consider  your- 
self the  winner  of  the  World's  Biggest  Loser  contest,  you  should  get  a 
bang  out  of  turning  down  any  flaky  offers  that  come  your  way.  Try  to  re- 
member that  you  are  not  desperate  anymore.  That  said,  the  transits  of 
Mars  and  Chiron  in  your  7th  house  indicate  that  there  is  still  a  powerful 
guy  around  whose  advice  you  would  do  well  to  follow.  The  problem  is 
that  whenever  you  honestly  try  to  listen  to  what  someone  else  has  to  say, 
you  tune  out  after  two  seconds.  And  that  is  a  problem. 


SAGITTARIUS    *f *      n  o  v.  2  2  -  D  E  c  .  2  I 

Given  the  12th-house  transits  you  are  currently  experiencing,  it  is  likely 
you  are  hiding  a  few  secrets  you  wouldn't  care  to  see  on  the  evening  news 
or  in  tabloid  headlines.  That  makes  you  somewhat  vulnerable,  especially 
since  there  are  a  couple  of  snakes  in  the  grass  who  would  love  to  bite  you 
on  the  ankle  and  ruin  your  little  picnic.  If  you  put  your  faith  in  a  higher 
power,  though,  you  will  not  have  to  waste  your  precious  time  worrying 
about  enemy  plots  or  looking  over  your  shoulder  every  five  seconds  to 
make  sure  you're  not  being  followed. 


>5 


CAPRICORN         |V       DEC.    22-  JAN.    19 

If  you've  resisted  the  temptation  to  invest  in  can't-miss  deals  that  promise 
fantastic  money,  then  you're  in  tune  with  cosmic  forces.  Putting  your  eggs 
in  a  stranger's  basket  is  scary,  no  matter  how  much  you  would  like  to  be- 
lieve in  that  person's  integrity.  Now,  however,  with  Mars  in  your  11th 
house,  you  will  have  to  take  risks  if  you  are  to  achieve  security.  That's  a 
tough  one  for  you,  since  you've  always  been  told  that  the  lottery  is  for 
suckers  and  a  few  lucky  dogs,  and  that  you  should  avoid  falling  into  the 
former  category  and  give  up  any  hope  of  stumbling  into  the  latter. 


GEMINI      S\    MAY   21-JUNE   21 

No  sane  human  being  could  fail  to  notice  how  exhausted  you  are,  or  hon- 
estly deny  your  need  to  retreat  into  yourself  and  escape  from  the  incessant 
pounding  you  have  been  taking  from  a  very  demanding  world.  It  would 
be  great  if  you  could  just  go  off  and  sit  on  a  sunny  deck  somewhere, 
sketching  hummingbirds  and  dictating  your  memoirs.  Your  6th  house  is 
buzzing,  however,  and  that  means  you've  got  to  get  yourself  into  a  work 
mode.  This  is  the  time  to  clean  up  the  joint,  get  your  health  together,  and 
stop  thinking  frightening  thoughts.  Retirement  now?  You?  Get  real. 


& 


CANCER      ^J«*   JUNE   22-JULY   22 

The  transit  of  Chiron  through  your  5th  house  hasn't  been  easy.  Single, 
childless  Cancers  have  had  their  hearts  stomped  on.  Maybe  it  was  im- 
portant for  them  to  open  up  emotionally,  but  only  those  who  have  never 
been  in  therapy  could  actually  enjoy  being  batted  around  like  that.  Mean- 
while, the  happily  married  and  fruitful  members  of  your  sign  have  re- 
ceived enough  aggravation  from  their  kids  to  last  a  lifetime.  Fortunately, 
it's  just  about  over.  Let's  hope  that  you've  learned  the  painful  lesson  of 
nonattachment  and  are  now  ready  to  have  some  serious  fun. 


To  hear  Michael  Lutin  read  your  weekly  horoscope,  call  1-900-28 V-FAIR  on  a  Touch-Tone  phone. 
Cost:  $1.95  per  minute.  If  you  are  under  18,  you  need  parental  permission. 


VANITY     FAIR 


AUGUST     199 


It  touches  my  hand  gently 


AS    IF    TO    REMIND    ME 


THAT   WHEN 


NEW   MILLENNIUM 


NOT    BE   ALONE. 


THREE-STONE    RING.    MOST   EXQUISITE  WITH   A  CENTER   STONE   OF    1/2   CARAT  OR    MORE. 


e  Beers,  the  world's  diamond  experts  since    1888.  www.adiamonoisforever.com         a   diamond   is   forever 


I  Questionnaire 


Sandra 
Bernhard 

From  her  1983  film  debut  in  Martin 

Scorsese's  The  King  of  Comedy 

to  her  acerbic  stand-up  performances, 

to  her  recent  Broadway  hit,  Vm  Still 

Here . . .  Damn  It!,  Sandra  Bernhard  has 

proved  to  be  comedy's  irreverent  hipster 

queen.  This  month,  as  she  takes  her 

show  on  tour,  Bernhard  pauses  to  sound 

off  on  bottom  feeders,  taxi  drivers, 

and  lunching  with  supermodels 


What  is  your  idea  of  perfect  happiness? 

A  cross-country  road  trip  with  a  new  lover  and  my  baby 
ruling  shotgun. 

Which  historical  figure  do  you  most  identify  with? 

I  can  tell  you  what  historical  figure  is  most  associated 
with  me:  Sarah  Bernhardt.  Unfortunately  she's  not  here  to 
comment. 

What  is  your  greatest  extravagance? 

My  open  account  with  a  high-class  escort  service  and  a 
standing  reservation  at  the  Carlyle. 

What  is  your  favorite  journey? 

Steve  Perry. 

On  what  occasion  do  you  lie? 

Onstage,  during  interviews,  during  grand-jury  testimony, 
when  I  get  pulled  over  for  speeding,  and  when  I  come 
through  customs  after  a  shopping  extravaganza  in  a  Third 
World  country. 

Which  living  person  do  you  most  despise? 

The  stinky  taxi  driver  who  picked  me  up  at  14th  and 
Eighth  on  December  1,  1998,  at  approximately  5:15  p.m. 

What  is  your  greatest  regret? 

A  recent  tension-fraught  lunch  with  a  supermodel. 

■    When  and  where  were  you  happiest? 
The  weeklong  anticipation  before  a  recent 
-  -    -  «ob    tension-fraught  lunch  with  a  supermodel 
(which  I  now  regret). 

Which  talent  would  you  most  like  to  have? 

The  ability  to  bullshit  my  way  into  a  major 
motion  picture. 

What  is  your  current  state  of  mind? 

Whacked  out  on  muscle  relaxants  and 
echinacea. 

What  is  your  most  treasured  possession? 

My  mucus  plug— it  sits  on  my  desk  in  a  snow 
globe. 

Where  would  you  like  to  live? 

1006  Bluff  Ridge  Drive,  New  Albany,  Indiana. 

What  is  your  most  marked  characteristic? 

A  tiny  mole  on  the  bottom  of  my  foot. 

What  is  the  quality  you  most  like  in  a  man? 

Lots  of  prickly  ear  hair. 

What  is  the  quality  you  most  like  in  a  woman? 

A  shrill,  bitchy  edge  that  never  stops. 

Who  is  your  favorite  hero  of  fiction? 

Neely  O'Hara. 

What  are  your  favorite  names? 

Ezekiel,  Tina,  Mickey,  Tilly,  Loulou,  Maurice, 
Herminio. 

What  is  it  that  you  most  dislike? 

Bottom  feeders. 

What  is  your  motto? 

"Kiss  'em,  slap  'em,  send  'em  home." 


PHOTOGRAPH    BY     ROBERT     ERDMANN 


I 


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©1999  Acura  Division  of  American  Honda  Motor  Co .  Inc  Acura.  CL  and  VTEC  are  trademarks  oj  Honda  Motor  Co ,  Ltd  HomeLink  is  a  registered  trademark  of  Prince  Corp  Michelm  and  MXV4  are  registered  trademarks  of 
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